Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord for his work on and involvementin the 1986 AIDS campaign programme. But the circumstances are different now—much less was known then, and the programme targeted the whole population. We now know that the main area of concern around HIV and AIDS is for gay men and those with contact with various parts of the world where the disease is prevalent, and the programme of action the department has enunciated is targeted at those at-risk groups.
	The noble Lord is right to refer to some rises in instances of sexual illness. This is a priority for the Government and a great deal of progress is being made, particularly in developing enhanced GUM services.

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: No, my Lords. Local primary care trusts have first responsibility for ensuring that services are commissioned appropriately and it is important that they should do so. Of course we want to see consistency in that approach, but the fact that PCTs have enhanced GUM services and that the target we set for people to receive an appointment within48 hours has now been achieved—70 per cent as compared with 45 per cent in May 2005—shows that they are having a positive impact.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, although I was not privileged to be in any previous Prime Minister's Cabinet, I can tell the noble Baroness that the Cabinet meetings conducted by the present Prime Minister take place around a table. Business is conducted efficaciously.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, there is absolutely no inconsistency between what I have said and collective responsibility: an efficient, effective Government, all agreeing on the sensible issues, discussing them beforehand, reaching an agreement and then standing by them.

Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, may I bring the noble and learned Lord back to the issue of the royal prerogative? In his stout defence, quite rightly, of accountability to Parliament, would he not agree that the fact that Parliament has no voice whatsoever on the treaties signed by Her Majesty's Government is a very substantial problem in a modern democracy? Does he agree that it is high time that the two Chambers of our Parliament began to set up machinery to enable Parliament to be heard on the issue before the signing of significant treaties?

Lord Kingsland: My Lords, the noble Baroness will recall the exchanges on this amendment over the Dispatch Box in Committee. In particular, I hope that she will recall that two questions were at issue. The first was whether the competition objective ought to be subservient to the first three objectives in Clause 1(1); that is, whether it ought to bite only if the Legal Services Board was satisfied that the first three objectives had been achieved. The noble Baroness's response, consistent with responses on Clause 1 in other respects, was to say that in her judgment all seven—now eight—objectives of the clause should carry equal weight, and that the Legal Services Board should exercise its judgment freely as between the appropriate weight given.
	As the noble Baroness has not tabled an amendment on this issue, it is reasonable to conclude that that remains the Government's position. It is now up to us to decide whether to put the matter to a vote. However, there was another dimension to the amendment, to which the noble Baroness promised to give further consideration. Clause 1 provides that the competition responsibilities of the Legal Services Board apply only to anti-competitive behaviour by "authorised persons".
	It is perfectly understandable that that should have been the Government's approach as the Competition Commission and the OFT have no responsibilities in that area. However, the Bill is by no means silent on the responsibilities of those organisations. The Minister will recall that there are detailed provisions in Clauses 56 to 60 about the responsibilities of the OFT and the Competition Commission over the competitive behaviour of the regulators themselves. An extremely elaborate procedure is laid down whereby the OFT draws up a report and reportsto the Secretary of State. There is then a provisionfor the Secretary of State to go to the Competition Commission for a further report on the samematter.
	We have two competition authorities, therefore, dealing with the responsibilities of the regulators on the one hand and the authorised persons on the other. My concern, as the Minister well knows, is over the confusion and conflict between the competition responsibilities of the OFT, the Secretary of State and the competition authority on the one hand and the Legal Services Board on the other. It is hard to see how you can compartmentalise anti-competitive behaviour in a regulator which will inevitably have an effect on the competitive behaviour of an authorised person. How, in those circumstances, can you unpack the anti-competitive conduct so as the divide the responsibilities as clearly as the Bill does? I beg to move.

Lord Campbell of Alloway: moved AmendmentNo. 4:
	Clause 1 , page 2, line 1, at end insert—
	"( ) quality of legal services and the standing of the profession"

Lord Campbell of Alloway: moved AmendmentNo. 5:
	Clause 1 , page 2, line 1, at end insert—
	"( ) In implementation of this Act the balance as between each and all regulatory objectives shall be determined by reasoned decision: notice of which shall have been given to afford objection by those to whom it would have been addressed."

Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, AmendmentNo. 5 is not a matter of substantive law. Again, it is a procedural provision of generic application to the decisions of all three regulatory bodies set up by statute in implementation of this Act. I pay tribute to the contribution of the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, who dealt with a disparity in a speech which no one sought to contradict.
	This is an overarching provision of principle. The object is to safeguard due and fair administration in accordance with the balance of the regulatory objectives. As a procedural provision, compliance with the amendment would be subject to judicial review. There is no doubt about that. This was established in the landmark decision of the Courtof Appeal in the Queen and the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal. It was a complex decision, the official transcript of which exceeds 40 pages, which I have read and is available in the Library. However, the reasoning of the decision that judicial review remains in these circumstances under the aegis of the High Court is well presented in a very short and readable Times law report on 11 April.
	There are three aspects of this amendment. Put simply, the first aspect is the balance of regulatory objectives when making a decision, which I picked up from my noble friend Lord Kingsland who convinced me that that was the right approach. This is the right approach because regulatory objectives compete and conflict. The second aspect is a reasoned decision. It is absolutely essential that the decision, not just of the board but of all regulatory bodies set up by statute, should be reasoned. The third aspect is the giving of notice of a decision to afford objection, which has arisen in other aspects recently; notably, on the defence bill.
	Provision for this, which is a reflection of a rudimentary requirement of natural justice, is made only in Schedule 7 and is solely related to directions of the board under Clause 31. However, it is not treated anywhere in the Bill as a principle of general application. These are predominantly lay regulatory bodies. There is nothing unusual in that, but inevitably they will have to deal with matters of law, and this amendment would in all events narrow the scope of contention and judicial review which now retains jurisdiction over the proportionality of a decision. As a matter of general principle, this should be included in Clause 1.
	This amendment is in the interests not only of the customer, but also the legal profession in establishing confidence. It would afford due and fair administration and is wholly consistent with the soft touch of the Clementi approach. The need for it became apparent during the debate in Committee. I think I even suggested that we were in a bit of a muddle and that there might be a trigger in the statute to introduce a code of practice, which was not a good idea, but no one had any conclusive suggestions. So an amendment such as this is requisite. I doubt whether it is in the right form because I am not an expert draftsman, but nonetheless in principle I commend it to your Lordships. I beg to move.

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: This large group of amendments contains necessary technical amendments to the Bill to bring other legislation into line with it, correct certain anomalies and give effect to undertakings made in Committee. The majority give effect to undertakings made by my noble friend in Committee to transfer functions relating to the Secretary of State to the Lord Chancellor.
	Amendments Nos. 28 and 330, which relate to Schedules 1 and 15, place the responsibility for laying before Parliament the audited annual accounts of the Legal Services Board and the Office for Legal Complaints on the Lord Chancellor. They bring the Legal Services Bill into line with similar legislation that has been introduced since 2000. Further, they ensure that the Government follow usual practice in the commercial sector, where companies rather than auditors file the accounts.
	Of the other amendments in this group, some, such as Amendments Nos. 47, 602 and 656,are included to ensure that the terminology throughout the Bill is consistent and to remedy minor drafting and typographical anomalies. These include, for example, replacing "trade mark attorney" with "trade mark agency", ensuring that the definition of manager in Clauses 176 and 177 is consistent with the definition in Clause 197 and correcting a minor drafting anomaly in Schedule 2.
	We have made a number of amendments to make it clear that the restrictions on providing immigration services and immigration advice currently contained in the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 still apply. The amendments also ensure that qualified solicitors, registered foreign lawyers, legal partnerships and recognised bodies are afforded the same transitional protection as individual solicitors.
	We have also amended the Public Notaries Acts of 1801 and 1843 to bring that profession into line with the new legal framework. Amendments made here preserve the existing exemption from a requirement to be authorised to conduct notarial activities that certain ecclesiastical appointees and government officials currently rely on, ensure that entitlementto carry out a notarial activity is determined in accordance with the Bill rather than the 1801 or 1843 Acts, give transitional protection to entities that conduct notarial activities and remove the offence of practising as a notary without authorisation, which is now covered by the Bill.
	Amendments Nos. 71, 84, 91 and 658 will allow the Association of Law Costs Draftsmen to be added to the list of approved regulators in Schedule 4 to the Bill. They will also ensure that those members of the ALCD who are currently authorised to exercise rights of audience and rights to conduct litigation will be able to continue to do so under the new arrangements. They also provide that, for a transitional period, such persons will be deemed to be authorised to administer oaths. The Association of Law Costs Draftsmen became an authorised body under the current regulatory provisions—Schedule 4 to the Courts and Legal Services Act 1990—following an affirmative resolution order which came into effect on 1 January 2007. These amendments simply update the provisions of Schedules 4, 5 and 22 to that Bill to reflect that.
	These amendments bring the Bill into line with the commitment made in Committee to transfer functions from the Secretary of State to the Lord Chancellor. In addition, this group includes technical amendments to take into account the provision of immigration services and advice under the new regime, to bring the Public Notaries Acts of 1801 and 1843 in line with the Bill, to add the Association of Law Costs Draftsmen to the table of approved regulators in Schedule 4 and to make the terminology within the Bill consistent.
	One of the key aims of the new arrangements that we want to put in place is to ensure a greater degree of independence and consistency in regulation, with a single independent oversight regulator—as opposed to many—with clear objectives, setting clear standards across the sector. Each of these individual amendments plays a small but important part in that process and helps to address Sir David Clementi's concerns about an overcomplex and inconsistent system of regulation. I beg to move.

Lord Maclennan of Rogart: My Lords, the groupof amendments that we are considering was foreshadowed in the debate that we had in Committee to which the Minister referred; the reasoning for the amendments was endorsed, indeed, presaged by me in that debate.
	It is important that the new regulatory system should so far as possible ensure greater independence of the legal professions from government; the substitution in the Bill of "Lord Chancellor" for "Secretary of State" was designed to bring that about. Since that debate, however, major changes have been announced in the structuring of government with regard to the role of the Lord Chancellor. It would be helpful if before this debate was concluded the Government could give some indication of how the establishment of a Ministry of Justice may have to be reflected in their thinking about the purposes that they have supported in introducing these amendments.
	The office of Minister of Justice, which will no doubt—or perhaps I should say "probably"—still attract the title of Lord Chancellor, may be held by a Member of the House of Commons. That seems highly probable. It may be held by someone who is not a lawyer and who, in this new role as Minister of Justice with its very wide responsibilities, will not necessarily carry the conventional views on how the office should be discharged. The role in the Cabinet of the new Secretary of State/Minister of Justice/Lord Chancellor may be quite different from that historically discharged by the Lord Chancellor.
	The change announced by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor was strongly supported on these Benches, but we equally strongly support the intention that the regulation of the legal professions and services should be so far as possible at arm's length from government. The independence of that system is very important if public confidence is to be retained. We shall certainly have to give further thought to the consequences of that announcement on this Bill and possibly return to the matter at a later stage.

Lord Kingsland: My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for his observations on amendments that he described as technical. By my calculations, there are 550 government amendments on Report, of which 230 concern, exclusively, the change between the role of the Secretary of State and that of the Lord Chancellor. I applaud the Government for making that change. Whatever the future fate of the office, there is no doubt that the responsibilities of someone who is described as Lord Chancellor under Section 1 of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 are materially different from those of the Secretaries of State. Itrust that, as a result of amendments that no doubt the Government will accept from us today, the independence of the legal profession will enormously strengthen the constitutional guarantees of the independence of the judiciary.
	The Minister described the remaining amendments as technical, and I entirely agree with him. The sadness is that, despite many of the hopes that the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, engendered in our hearts and minds in Committee, the Report stage amendments are little more than technical, with the changes to the status of the Secretary of State and the insertion of "public interest" in Clause 1 being remarkable and welcome exceptions.
	On behalf of the Opposition, I express great disappointment. These are not party-political matters that lie between us. We all have a common interest in ensuring that legal services are provided properly, effectively and at a reasonable cost, and that the independence of the profession is preserved.
	The noble Baroness expressed broad agreement on almost all the amendments that we tabled. Yet, on Report, we find nothing of substance from the Government. I hope that during what is likely to be a long Report stage, when we try again to change the noble Baroness's mind, she will respond more positively, even if only a shade.

Lord Drayson: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement made in another place by my right honourable friend the Defence Secretary. The Statement is as follows:
	"With permission, Mr Speaker, I should like to make a Statement about operational events during the Recess. Before I start, I know that the whole House will join me in expressing my condolences to the families and friends of the nine service men and women who have lost their lives since the House last sat. "On 1 April, Kingsman Danny Wilson and, on 2 April, Rifleman Aaron Lincoln were killed by small arms fire while on patrol in Basra City. On5 April, Second Lieutenant Joanna Yorke Dyer, Corporal Kris O'Neill, Private Eleanor Dlugosz, Kingsman Adam Smith and their interpreter were killed when their Warrior vehicle was hit by a massive bomb west of Basra City. On 13 April, Private Chris Gray was killed in Afghanistan in a firefight with the Taliban and, on Saturday night, two servicemen were killed when two UK helicopters collided north of Baghdad. An investigation is ongoing, but all the evidence so far indicates that this was an accident, not an attack. Several personnel were seriously injured during this period in these and other incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they too are in our thoughts."This is a reminder of the risks faced every day by our forces on our behalf. I offer our gratitude and profound respect for those who have died and those who have been injured in the service of their country."Members will understand that there is a strict time limit on this Statement. I intend to focus on the incident which has attracted the most public and parliamentary attention during the recess; namely, the incident in which 15 of our personnel were captured and detained by the Iranians and the events that followed."I will describe, first, the incident itself; secondly, how it was handled diplomatically; and thirdly, how it was handled in media terms, including the decision to allow serving personnel to talk to the media individually and to accept payment for so doing—decisions for which, as I have already made clear, I accept responsibility. Finally, I will set out how we intend to learn the lessons for the future."I turn first to the incident itself. On 23 March, HMS 'Cornwall' was operating as part of the coalition taskforce in the northern Arabian Gulf under the authority of a UN resolution. The taskforce is responsible for a range of maritime security operations, including protecting the Iraqi oil infrastructure and undertaking boardings to disrupt weapons smuggling."At 0753, 'Cornwall' launched two boats, with a Lynx helicopter in support, with the intention to board MV 'Tarawa', a merchant vessel that had evaded a boarding the day before. En route, the Lynx flew over a different vessel, MV 'Al Hanin', and reported a suspect cargo. A decision was made to board the 'Al Hanin'. The position was well inside Iraqi waters."The boarding team boarded the vessel and, at 0846, the Royal Marine boarding officer reported the ship secure. The Lynx was tasked to return to the 'Cornwall'. By 0900, the helicopter was back on board and put at 30 minutes' notice to fly."At 0904, one of the two Royal Navy boats reported Iranian Revolutionary Guard Navy activity nearby. Very soon afterwards, one of the boats reported that the Iranians were beside them. By 0906, voice communications with the boats were lost and, shortly after, all communications were lost."At 0928, the Lynx was launched again and returned to the position of the 'Al Hanin'. Initially, it was unable to find the UK boats, but at 1005 one was spotted being escorted by Iranian vessels."That concludes what I can say today about the operational details. I am happy to answer questions, but there is not much more to say at this stage until investigations are complete. I will say two final things. First, the Royal Navy is not currently conducting boarding operations, although coalition partners are, and the Navy continues to fulfil its other tasks. Secondly, I support the decision of the Royal Marine captain to order his boarding party to lower their readied weapons. As he put it, he judged that if they had resisted,
	'there would have been a major fight, one we could not have won, with consequences that would have had major strategic impact'.
	"Let me turn now to the diplomatic handling of the incident. The Iranians detained our personnel illegally and took them first to an Iranian Revolutionary Guard naval base and from there to Tehran. We made clear both directly to the Iranians and in public statements that their detention was unacceptable and that they should be released immediately."We made intense diplomatic efforts to establish direct lines of communication with Iranian leaders to prevent the situation escalating and to resolve it quickly. It became clear that this alone would not be enough, not least because of the internal struggles within Iran as to who had control of the situation."We therefore galvanised the international community to put pressure on the Iranian regime. The Prime Minister has rightly paid tribute to those friends in the EU, in the UN and in the region who supported us and who condemned the illegal detention. I am in no doubt that this focused minds at the top of the Iranian regime. "Our personnel were released on Wednesday4 April, after a predictable attempt by the Iranian president to turn it into a propaganda victory. But this should fool no one. Serious observers do not believe that Iran has emerged from this in a stronger position. We should remember that our main objective, the peaceful resolution of the incident and the safe return of our people, was achieved earlier than many predicted. Let me be clear: there was no apology, and no deal."Let me turn now to the media handling of this incident. On Thursday 5 April, the 15 personnel arrived in the UK and were debriefed and reunited with their families. The next day, six of the 15 held a collective press conference, organised by the MoD, which was uncontroversial. The controversy surrounds the relations between individual personnel and the media. The media had approached the families of the detainees while they were still being held in Iran. There were many offers of payment. These approaches intensified as soon as the 15 were released and it was clear that the pressure would soon be transferred from the families to the individuals themselves. They were already aware of the criticism of their behaviour while detained and some were intent on setting the record straight. "This left us with a dilemma. We had a duty of care to the individuals and their families, who were under intense pressure. On the Thursday, all those involved took the view that we should allow the individuals to talk to the media and that we should support them through that process. I believe that all those involved in this decision acted in good faith and out of a desire to protect the individuals, to protect the service and to protect operational security against the risks inherent in unofficial dialogue with the media. These were real risks, which have materialised in the past."Once the decision had been taken to allow the individuals to talk to the media, this raised a second question: how to handle the fact that the media were competing for these individuals by offering substantial sums of money. This second question was considered by the Navy over the same short period. The Navy concluded that payments were 'permissible' under Queen's Regulations, and that in this particular situation it was,
	'impractical to attempt to prevent',
	them. This was the position presented to me in a note sent from the Navy's HQ in Portsmouth to my office on Thursday afternoon, and which was put to me on Good Friday."I accept that in retrospect I should have rejected the note and over-ruled the decision. The circumstances were exceptional and the pressure on the families was intense. The Navy's decision was taken in good faith, and so was its interpretation of the regulations. But I should have foreseen that this attempt by the Navy in good faith to handle an exceptional situation would be interpreted as indicating a new departure in the way the Armed Forces deal with the media. "Over the weekend I discussed the issue further, and on Monday I asked for further advice from naval chiefs and the Chief of the Defence Staff. I decided that we must immediately review the rules and stop any further media payments to serving personnel until this review was complete. I informed the Prime Minister—which, as he has made clear, was his only involvement in this matter—and announced the decision in a statement. "Let me be clear with the House: I made a mistake. I have been completely open about that. And to the extent that what happened between Friday and Monday has caused people to question the hard-won reputation of the Armed Forces, that is something I profoundly regret; but I remind people that precisely because this reputation is hard won, it is not easily undermined. These are the facts as I know them."Let me turn to what happens now. I made clear on Monday the implications for the specific issue of serving personnel receiving payment—that this must not happen again. But clearly there are other lessons to be learned from this whole incident. "The first aspect is the operational circumstances and factors leading to the capture of the 15 personnel. This was an unusual situation with wide and far-reaching consequences; and to reflect this, I can announce that the Chief of the Defence Staff has appointed Lieutenant-General Sir Robert Fulton, Royal Marines, currently the Governor-General of Gibraltar, to lead an inquiry. As a retired former commander of UK amphibious taskforces, he will bring both expertise and objectivity to the inquiry. It will cover all operational aspects, including risk and threat assessment, strategic and operational planning, tactical decisions, rules of engagement, training, equipment and resources. I expect this to take around six weeks. Clearly it will consider operationally sensitive material and, as such, it will not be possible to publish all the conclusions, but they will be presented to the House of Commons Defence Select Committee in full. I am committed to ensuring that Parliament and the public have the full facts but, just as importantly, to ensuring that the MoD and the services learn from these events and do not let this happen again. "In a similar spirit, and on the same timeframe, I can also announce that I will be asking a small team to take over the review of the media handling which I started last week. The team will consist of a senior officer and a senior MoD official, both unconnected with these events, and will be led by an independent figure with wide media experience. The review will draw on all relevant experience—not just of this incident but of other high-profile incidents involving personnel on operations. "I want to make it clear that this review is not a witch hunt. As I have already said, I take responsibility for this particular case. Rather, the review will seek to identify lessons and make recommendations on how to manage the complex issues at play in this area: how to balance our duty to support our people, our duty of transparency, our duty to protect the reputation of the services and, most important, our duty to protect the security of our personnel in a demanding media environment. "I take responsibility for what happened over last weekend. I have acted to put it right. I have acted to make sure we learn the lessons of the whole episode in a manner that allows for full parliamentary scrutiny. But, as we go through this process, we should remember the most important point in all this, which is that we got our people back safe and on our terms".
	My Lords, that concludes the Statement.

Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement and I join him in sending our condolences to the families of those who died in the Puma helicopters and to the families of the other members of the Armed Forces killed during the Recess. Our thoughts are also with those personnel who were seriously injured. While we have been enjoying our Easter holidays, our Armed Forces have been serving on our behalf, sometimes paying the ultimate price.
	I am sure that it gave the Minister no pleasure to have to make this humiliating Statement any more than it has given any of us pleasure to hear it. I say nothing at this stage about the victims of these events—the 15 British sailors and marines who were seized, detained and exhibited by the Iranians. Some people may be willing to regard the whole thing as a chapter of accidents, but that, I fear, is not the truth of the matter. The truth is that they were seized, clearly unlawfully, while engaged on operations for which they were inadequately equipped, inadequately briefed and inadequately supported.
	The inadequacies have not arisen from this operation; they have been long-standing, as noble and gallant Lords and many other noble Lords from all sides of this House have warned time and time again. The inadequacies are thus the direct fault of Her Majesty's Government and of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer in particular, together with their successive Secretaries of State for Defence, due to their persistent determination to take unfair advantage of the can-do attitude of our Armed Forces and to task those forces spread over-thinly on the ground, on the water and in the air—in short, to do as much as possible with as little as possible.
	So we welcome the announcement of the setting up of an inquiry. My right honourable friend David Cameron made it clear that the Opposition, speaking for the country as a whole, require there to be a prompt and full inquiry, examining and reporting on the fundamental causes as well as the incidental events. Those who are fortunate to know Sir Rob Fulton will immediately agree that he is exactly the right person to undertake this task. We hear what was said in the Statement about not publishing the full conclusions of the Fulton report and about disclosing the whole to the Defence Committee in the other place. I believe that I will have the support of all sides of the House when I say that it is essential that the report's findings should be disclosed equally fully to a representative body of noble Lords. I must therefore ask the Minister whether he will take steps to consult the usual channels as soon as possible on how such a body can best be established.
	In the mean time, there are some outstanding questions to which the public are entitled to an immediate answer. Is it usual for mother ships to stand off at large distances—10 nautical miles in this case—from ongoing boarding operations? It is well known that because of atmospheric conditions in the area, radio communications often fail, as appears to have happened in this case. Why, if it is standard practice and necessary to maintain continuous air cover during such operations, did the Lynx return to HMS "Cornwall" and why was it then at only30 minutes notice to fly? Is it a correct decision that all our naval boarding operations should now be halted while, as we are told in the Statement, they are continued by our allies, or is this another example of a hasty and unconsidered decision by the Secretary of State?
	Will the Fulton report also cover the number of personnel who should be involved in boarding operations, their armaments and additional support that should always be on hand? Why was the incursion by the Iranians not picked up by HMS "Cornwall"? It is only three years since other members of our Armed Forces were illegally seized by the Iranians. What procedures were put in place after discussions with the Iranians after that seizure? Are they still valid?
	The main role of HMS "Cornwall" has been to protect the Iraqi oil infrastructure. Who will be responsible for that when HMS "Cornwall" is paid off? Is the Minister satisfied that naval personnel receive adequate conduct-after-capture training to cope with likely increased efforts to take them hostage?
	While welcoming the setting up of a review of media handling, why were proper plans not in place for the return of the captives, particularly in light of the PCC's warning to the MoD of the possible media circus and its offer of help.
	Finally, is it not a disturbing reflection on the operation of the offices of the Secretary of State and those of the Prime Minister that the Prime Minister did not learn of this major international crisis until he heard them through the media on Sunday? Despite the almost inconceivable incompetence of the media handling in this matter, and—as the Statement admits—other high-profile incidents, we must not lose sight of the fundamental point, which is the catalogue of problems that led to the capture of our personnel. Are the Government confident that they are taking action that will ensure that this does not simply become another high-profile incident in a future Statement?

Lord Garden: My Lords, I start by expressing from these Benches our relief over the safe return of the15 sailors and Royal Marines who were taken captive. That feeling is of course tempered by our sadness over the nine personnel who have been killed in operations since we last met, and our sympathy goes out to the families who have suffered losses and to those further personnel who have been injured.
	I thank the Minister for relaying the Statement, which spends just one page out of the six on operational matters. But I do not intend to focus my questions on media handling and who made the decision that cheque-book journalism was the new way for the Ministry of Defence. I say simply that, along with both serving and former military colleagues to whom I have spoken in the past week, we were all astonished by the naivety of those who appear to have been involved in the decision and surprised that the Defence Secretary failed to use his political nous when needed. However, in the end, he made the right decision. The Westminster and Wapping frenzy over who knew what about payment for stories must not obscure the much more serious question of how such a catastrophe occurred in the first place, and what has happened to the reputation of our Armed Forces as a result.
	When the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, made a Statement on 28 March, I deferred asking any questions about the circumstances. In a time of delicate diplomacy, the last thing needed was a row about how we got into this mess. However, now that the sailors and marines have all returned safely, we need a full examination of how Britain found itself outwitted by the Iranians. In the Statement, the Minister has announced the inquiry to be headed by Sir Rob Fulton, who I know well. I join others in saying that he is an excellent choice; I have the highest regard for him.
	The Royal Navy is well practised in boarding and searching operations in many parts of the world. However, there are few areas as sensitive as the Shatt al-Arab waterway border between Iran and Iraq. It seems clear that the UK was operating within Iraqi waters and that the Iranian action was illegal. However, can the Minister explain today—not at the end of the inquiry—why the taskforce failed to foresee the risk? As the noble Lord, Lord Astor of Hever, has said, in June 2004, six British marines and two sailors were seized by Iran in nearby waters. Although they were released unharmed after three days, their boats have never been returned, so even a casual observer knows that it is a possibility. What intelligence assessments has the Minister sat and listened to at the MoD which would have said this? Are there not procedures to take into account another threat in that area: potential terrorists in boats attacking our navy? Was there nothing to stop that, and would it not have stopped the Iranians? We could have those answers today, rather than waiting for the end of the inquiry.
	So far, what we know about the tactical position seems to suggest complacency was the order of the day. While the lead ship, HMS "Cornwall", may have been unsuitable for close in-shore operations, this was a multi-national taskforce. What were the other nations doing? Where were the support vessels, the helicopters and fixed-wing air reconnaissance to give the information?
	The sense that the problems were not anticipated is compounded by the apparent lack of training in conduct after capture for the hapless hostages. In the past, that was normal procedure. Has that stopped? Can the Minister tell us whether all personnel in the area get conduct-after-capture training? Again, the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines have seen themselves end up on Iranian television. As a result of their admissions of guilt, the reputation of the United Kingdom has sunk further in that part of the world.
	A major military blunder was salvaged by diplomacy, and then ruined by a bizarre public relations exercise organised by the Royal Navy and initially allowed by the Defence Secretary. It looks as though the Ministry of Defence is joining the Home Office as "not fit for purpose". The Statement offers a separate review about future press relations, in which there is to be an independent component. Will there be an independent figure in the Fulton review? Perhaps there will be a distinguished defence academic such as Sir Lawrence Freedman, who wrote the Falklands official history; somebody who can look from outside of the closet of the Ministry of Defence.
	Will the Minister assure us that he will provide the House with a copy of the terms of reference for the Fulton inquiry, so that we know what it is going to look at? I support the call of the noble Lord, Lord Astor of Hever, for a parallel to the House of Commons Defence Select Committee having access to the final, full report for your Lordships' House.
	Will the Minister tell us the current situation in that region for maritime border security operations? I understood that we were in the lead; if we are not doing it, who is in the lead? Who is doing it? Are the Iraqi Government content that we have now withdrawn? How long are we withdrawn for? Until the inquiry is over? For ever? What are we doing with our forces out there? Finally, will the Minister assure the House that the lessons from this shambles will be learnt by the Ministry of Defence, the Permanent Joint Headquarters and the Royal Navy, and that they will not take the Prime Minister's advice that it is time to move on?

Lord Craig of Radley: My Lords, in reply to the shadow Defence Secretary in the other place,Mr Browne implied that he had the support of the Chiefs of Staff. I think that that is a sensible and pragmatic view for the chiefs to take. This is not the time to be changing a Secretary of State. Extremely serious strategic issues face this country. Both CDS and CGS have commented in public about the serious overcommitment faced by our forces on two operational fronts. The situation must be strongly represented in Cabinet and the incumbent must be familiar with what is going on. A new Secretary of State would take time to get up to speed. With a change of Prime Minister, there is a possibility that a further Cabinet shuffle could take place very soon.
	For those reasons, it would be wrong for the Secretary of State to resign or to be fired. I take it that he has the full support of his ministerial colleagues and I hope that that view will be represented to the Secretary of State.

Lord Robertson of Port Ellen: My Lords, I add my voice to that of my noble friend and of the whole House in his sympathy and condolence for those who have died in the past few weeks, their families, their friends—and those who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan during the past three years. In the light of their sacrifice and their families' agonies, is there not a danger of us scalding ourselves in cold water by focusing obsessively on the press coverage of some of the experiences of those involved?
	None of us who have served as Secretary of State for Defence—six Members of this House have held that position—can have not wanted to have the perfect wisdom of hindsight when we took decisions, especially in relation to the press coverage of the vast department for which we had stewardship and responsibility.
	Decisions have been taken in the past that were benign at the time but dramatic in their consequences. There was the decision to allow Mr John Nichol, the captured pilot in the first Gulf War, to talk to the media; the decision taken to allow General Sir Peter de Billière to publish his memoirs, especially about his time in the Special Forces; and the decision, regretted as it was, when Michael Portillo mentioned the Special Air Service at the Conservative Party conference. All of those were done in a benign context but had repercussions and I think that everyone connected with them might have wished for the wisdom of hindsight. Such things happen in the circumstances and it is right, appropriate and in the spirit of the man that Des Browne has come to make such a significant apology for his misjudgment—his temporary misjudgment—in the situation.
	I very much welcome my noble friend's announcement that General Sir Robert Fulton will head the inquiry, because there are serious issues to be examined here and the Government are as interested in the answers as anyone else. Sir Robert Fulton, who served as Captain General of the Royal Marines while I was Defence Secretary, is ideally suited to giving judgments on that, too. Throughout all this, we really must underscore the fact that our hostages got out safely and without price. That is of huge significance, which we should in no way underestimate.
	The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, has made the point that the Chiefs of Staff today have made a statement about their confidence in Des Browne as the Secretary of State for Defence. That is an important and relevant thing for them to have done, which they will have done in good faith. This is no time for changing the political leadership at the top. It would be a grave disservice to those who continue to serve our country in areas of danger if that were to be the outcome.

Lord Drayson: My Lords, I agree with everything that my noble friend has said, and with the perspective into which he puts these matters. It is important for the House to keep media issues in perspective. Itis important for us to focus on what is reallyimportant.

Lord Carlile of Berriew: My Lords, I start by making a declaration of interest, as I am a practising member of the Bar and head of a set of barristers' chambers with more than 80 barristers in it. We on these Benches support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Neill of Bladen. He moved it with great clarity and I shall try to restrict my remarks to a relative minimum.
	As the noble Lord said, the appointment of the chairman of the board is not merely an important appointment but the appointment of a person who will have great influence over standards exercised by advocates and in the courts. One needs only to look at the professional principles set out in Clause 1 to see the very great jurisdiction that the chairman of the board will have as he directs his board.
	The clear message of the amendment is that those at the Bar, solicitors, possibly the judiciary—for whom I do not dare to speak—and certainly a large swathe of the public wish to be assured that the legal system in this country will remain independent of the Executive. I do not want to be seen as grudging or ungrateful for Amendment No. 6, which was conceded by the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, but that amendment is meaningless in the current environment. I think that the concession was made before the announcement that there would be a Ministry of Justice, or certainly the Minister did not seem to know that there was going to be an announcement of such a ministry—and I see that she is assenting to that proposition. The effect of the amendment is actually nil when it comes to an assessment of the independence of the legal system.
	We now know that the Lord Chancellor is likely to be an elected Member of the other place, a party appointee, an instrument of government and quite possibly from time to time someone with no knowledge whatever in any depth of the legal system. Any theory of the independence of the office of the Lord Chancellor, to which the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, alluded, is now gone for ever. The Lord Chancellor no longer sits astride the constitution in part as a Cabinet Minister and in part as an entirely independent person—the sort of role that was carried out so ably by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, who I am pleased to see in his place this afternoon. How do we assure the profession, the public and the judges of that crucial independence of the legal system without something like this amendment, which seems to me to provide a simple answer?
	As we started this debate, I was reminded of my noble friend Lord Hooson, who in one of his most celebrated cases during an illustrious and distinguished career at the Bar, defended Ian Brady on charges of murder. A role of advocates is sometimes to do what is deeply unpopular with the public at large and to show a quintessential independence which is not motivated by being reasonably rewarded for the case, but rather by a tradition that somebody has to appear in that unpopular cause. If instructed, we do it because we have the confidence that, provided we act within professional ethics, we will be regarded at all times as independent.
	Every young barrister who has made his or her first appearance in the Lord Chief Justice's court in the Court of Appeal Criminal Division learns very quickly what that means—that if you step outside the line of proper preparation and presentation, and if you say too much or too little, you will be given a clear lesson by the Lord Chief Justices and their Lordships before whom you appear. There are one or two here before whom I have appeared, but in the fairly distant past, I am bound to confess.
	The recent Sullivan case is a very good example of my next point. If a member of the Bar or other advocate goes to the Court of Appeal and criticises a member of the judiciary for discourtesy, bias or laziness—as happens from time to time—they know that, as long as they act within the professional standards set out in Clause 1, the Court of Appeal and the senior judiciary as a whole will upholdtheir right to represent the interests in the case independently.
	From time to time barristers have to appear on behalf of Secretaries of State to defend indefensible decisions by Ministers. We should consider the huge number of cases that successive Home Secretaries have lost in the Administrative Court. I am not making a party-political point, because they are all as good or as bad as each other in this context. What we have is a profession that understands that if it behaves properly its independence will be protected. But who protects its independence? It is certainly not Ministers. If we ask independent advocates how much they feel that their independence is protected by Ministers, they will laugh because they know that that is not where their protection comes from. If we ask them whether their independence is protected by chairmen of non-governmental organisations, committees, the Bar Standards Board or any other independently appointed committee, they will guffaw because they know that is often far distant from what they do every day. The answer they will give in the end, when you press them, is, "We are protected by the judges. We may not like some of the judges before whom we appear. They may treat us roughly or they may treat us kindly, but at the end of the day they are the guarantors of our protection as advocates". But we are not just talking about the advocates. When judges protect advocates, whom are they really protecting? They are protecting our lay clients—citizens who often constitute extremely unpopular causes, such as the examples I have given.
	To provide that assurance to the public, the amendment takes a small but important step. Our constitution is not written. The noble Lord, Lord Borrie, spoke, if I may say so, with respect, as though it was immutable. What the noble Lord, Lord Neill of Bladen, I and others seek to do today is to put into our mobile, changing constitution an important and surely rather uncontroversial piece of independence. Indeed, I suspect that the Minister agrees with the principle of everything that I have said so far. I suspect she is really concerned about the mechanics. If that is right, I urge her to put aside the mechanics and to recognise that absolutely no harm, and certainly a lot of perceptual good, could be done by this change.
	The guarantee of independence is part of the golden thread, as it has been called by others, of the British legal system. In this amendment, the noble Lord seeks to provide a little more strength to that golden thread.

Lord Mackay of Clashfern: My Lords, since I have not spoken thus far, I am probably in order—even at Report stage. I do not practise in England and, therefore, can exclude myself completely from the battalions of those who will be regulated by the Legal Services Board. It is a mistake on the part of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty—and I understand perfectly why he said it—to say that the Lord Chief Justice is part of the regulated. He is not; the judiciary is not subject to the regulation of the Legal Services Board. The board, among others, will regulate the practices of those who have rights of audience in the courts, and the Lord Chief Justice is now, by virtue of the actions of this Government with the support of Parliament, the head of the judiciary. Therefore, the Legal Services Board will operate in an important way within the precincts of the courts by regulating those who have rights of audience there. Surely it is fundamental that those who have rights of audience in the courts should, in connection with the regulation, have an input from the head of the judiciary—the Lord Chief Justice.
	When confronted with that point at Second Reading, the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said, in a phrase which I was astonished to hear, that the Lord Chief Justice is "rightly regarded" by consumers as just another lawyer. That does not say much for the Lord Chancellor's input into the appointment of the Lord Chief Justice. The Lord Chief Justice is selected by Her Majesty the Queen on advice that she receives from Her Majesty's Government, and under the new system there will be intermediate stages before that advice is given.
	To suggest that the Lord Chief Justice is just another lawyer is to undermine the whole system of judicial determination. If our consumers have a dispute, ultimately they will have to go to the courts. The courts regulate the rights of consumers against those whose products they consume or whose services they take, and if their clients, the consumers, do not have confidence in the courts of law, our system will be in the gravest possible danger. I believe that the Lord Chief Justice enjoys in the community, not only because of his position but also because of the way in which he fulfils that position, a confidence whichis unlikely to be shared by any Minister of theCrown.
	It is perfectly proper that Ministers of the Crown should have responsibility for selecting and appointing those who take part in the Legal Services Board, which is a creation of Parliament with nominations by the Executive. But I believe it is right that, where the board has a function in relation to the rights of audience in the courts, of which the Lord Chief Justice is the head by the determination of Parliament, the Lord Chief Justice should have a say in who is to be ultimately responsible for managing the control system which is to be put in place. Therefore, I very strongly resent the idea that the Lord Chief Justice is "rightly regarded" as just another lawyer, compared by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, with an official of Tesco, which I regard as a very high and important position, and also with Mr Rupert Murdoch, with whom I have not had much acquaintance. The Lord Chief Justice is well known.
	The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, pointed out that my noble friend Lady Carnegy of Lour might be familiar with the situation in Edinburgh. I am reasonably familiar with the situation there but I also have a certain familiarity with the situation in this part of the world. In so far as we have a United Kingdom, it is important that the judiciary is regarded as having high status in all parts of that kingdom. I strongly support the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Neill of Bladen.

Baroness Howe of Idlicote: My Lords, I am probably better known as a supporter of the citizens and consumers out there than almost anything else. It was therefore with a somewhat divided mind that I initially approached this whole subject. However, I no longer believe that consumers and citizens will be offended by what is proposed in the amendment—far from it. I say that because of the changes that have already been made concerning the departments and the beginnings of doubt about the separation of powers between the Executive and the judiciary. It is crucial that in future they are seen as separate and independent, and surely, for the sake of confidence in the whole legal profession, it is not too much to ask for the Lord Chief Justice to have this minor but important role of concurring with an appointment. I am a huge admirer of Which?; indeed, I think that I sponsor one of their people who help your Lordships' House. However, in this case, I am afraid that I take the opposite view.

Lord Brennan: My Lords, I declare an interest in that I was chairman of the Bar in 1999 during the passage of the Access to Justice Bill. That experience honed my capacity for objective thinking about my professional status in society and in its service. In the eight years that have passed since then, I suspect that this is the next major Bill to deal with the way that our legal services operate in this country. It is exceptionally important.
	The noble Lords, Lord Neill of Bladen and Lord Carlile of Berriew, mentioned the importance of principle in relation to the way in which the Legal Services Board should operate and be seen to operate. To principle, I want to ally practice. Lawyers such as myself who travel abroad to work are often privileged to hear people saying, "How lucky you are in the legal system that you have with its independence, its integrity and its service of democratic value". And we take it for granted. They do not. When I go abroad, people say, "How is it you get so much work in London from around the world?". From a group of lawyers who probably number a couple of thousand at most comes £2 billion-plus a year in foreign earnings. That has gone up by 10 or 15 per cent over the past 10 years and is climbing. Adopting the pungent example of my noble friend Lord Whitty, do we seriously think that the financial punters in New York, Frankfurt and the other major legal cities in the world are not looking, as they always do, with the greatest care at the changes that we are making to our profession, waiting to seize, as they will, on any argument that will undermine our tradition of independence so that they can get the work? It is competition; it is the way the world works. That is practical.
	The members of senior firms and senior barristers' chambers who wrote to my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor and the Chancellor of the Exchequer about this issue were not oblivious to the needs of consumers. They were of the view—rightly, in my opinion—that this particular point had no adverse impact on the rights of consumers but, rather, that it sought to protect the foreign earnings made by the British legal profession. If you were in business out there, which we are reminded to think of, making £2 billion a year—a business where all the people in it perceived a serious risk—and you measured the risk with a perception of the vagueness that we have heard described, there would be no contest: trade wouldwin every time. If it is to win, what will most accommodate maintaining our independence without in any way impinging on the objective of the Bill? The answer is to use the Lord Chief Justice. The House will forgive me if I remind your Lordships that only two years ago we passed the Constitutional Reform Act in which we legislated for the Lord Chief Justice of this country to be head of the judiciary, to be in charge of the administration of justice. It was called a concordat. He was given the right to report to Parliament—and is he just another lawyer? Please!
	We are talking about the constitutional state of our country when we talk about the Lord Chief Justice. His role in this area is of limited effect, but it is to establish his concurrence that the chairman of the Legal Services Board is the kind of person who, in the opinion of the Lord Chief Justice, will meet the regulatory objectives. Under our constitutional concordat, the Lord Chief Justice is in charge of the good administration of justice. The amendment seeks no more than that. Is there anybody who would speak against it? I must confess to my noble friend Lord Whitty that the two organisations representing consumers to which I have spoken in the past few days have no particular interest in this point.
	Has it been done elsewhere? Yes, in Scotland, where the Lord President has this function. It is not party politics; nor is it consumer rhetoric. It is an important trading aspect of our country with limited protection sought by using the person we regard as essential to our constitutional legal system. If it is not to be concurrence, why not consultation, as the Joint Committee suggested? I hope that the Government will give serious thought to that. Of course, they can limit consultation to the Lord Chief Justice because of his constitutional role. I would much prefer thatto the word "concurrence". My noble friend the Minister, with great charm and ability, has conducted the Bill so far most effectively. The only test I shall ask of her is that at this particular time she seeks a way towards consultation rather than concurrence; if we are told that it is not consultation, we are left with concurrence. I am sure that, on reflection, the Lord Chancellor either now or at Third Reading, will not risk £2 billion a year for some consumer perception.

Lord Woolf: My Lords, it is with some hesitation that I intervene at this stage of the debate on this amendment. In view of some of the things I have heard since I re-entered the Chamber, perhaps I should disclose an interest as a former Lord Chief Justice.
	I apologise for not being here, but the reason may have some relevance. Tomorrow a new commercial court will be opened for Dubai's financial centre. The chief justice of that court is Sir Anthony Evans, who is a distinguished judge and arbitrator, and a former member of the Court of Appeal. The court will apply the common law. It is being established in such a way because of the belief in the qualities of the legal system of which this country is the mother, and of the standards of judicial behaviour pertaining in this jurisdiction. I was about to engage in preparing a greeting to that court because I am now the president of a similar, sister court in the Gulf state of Qatar. Again, that court will apply common law standards. I thought that it might be relevant to explain my absence; I was preparing that statement, which must go off tonight, as the arrangements for me to appear on video, as originally intended, have gone awry.
	Even though I do not vote in this House because I also sit here as a judge, I want, if I may, to take the opportunity to make two more points. First—this should appeal to Ministers—I suggest that this amendment accords with the concordat that I was responsible for negotiating with the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor to become a Minister of Justice. We saw the importance of a partnership between the role of the Lord Chancellor and the new role of the chief justice, particularly in relation to situations where it was important that it should appear that the roles of the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice should be seen to be independent, but where they both had a legitimate interest to protect.
	As to that legitimate interest in the present situation, the independence of our judiciary is dependent on the independence of our legal profession. We could not have an independent judiciary were it not for the independence of the legal profession from which our judges are selected. They become judges with that independence as part of their natural instinct. It is not something that they have to relearn when becoming a judge; it is the independence that they have practised throughout their professional life. It is so important that we take what steps we can to ensure that that independence survives and flourishes.
	The board will be only one factor in the future of the legal profession that can have an impact on the independence to which I have just referred. Looking into the future, because of the constitutional changes that we have passed into law, we have to recognise that the role of the Lord Chancellor will evolve and change. We have to recognise that his involvement in the court system will be diminished not because of any wish on his part, but because of his other commitments. The very heavy responsibilities that he will have as Minister of Justice, with which no Lord Chancellor has ever been saddled, mean that he will not be so closely involved with the judiciary or with the legal profession, no matter what his personal inclination may be. He will be able to delegate to other Ministers many of his responsibilities. But a Lord Chief Justice does not and cannot do that to the same extent, if at all. The important matter to be borne in mind is that in requiring his concurrence, there will at least be a conversation of the sort that the concordat again and again envisaged between the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice of the day, where one can be assured that the members of the board will be of the quality necessary to ensure the quality of the legal profession. I support the amendment, although, for the reasons I have given, I will not vote.
	I shall say a final word to the Minister, if I may. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, about her desire to meet the interests of those who have a point to make when promoting a Bill to the House. I echo what has been said about a desire to conciliate and mediate; that is highly desirable. The spirit with which the concordat was negotiated should be borne in mind by Ministers, including the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, when they come to make their decisions on the amendment.

Lord Kingsland: My Lords, all of us who tabled the amendment are extremely fortunate that it was introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Neill of Bladen. He brings to what he said the enormous prestige of his career. He has been chairman of the Bar and chairman of the Senate of the Inns of Court, and he has had a towering practice at the Bar for many years, as well as great experience of public life in different roles. The mere fact that the amendment was introduced by the noble Lord ought to take us to at least a 75 per cent chance of victory, even before the Minister stands up and speaks.
	When the Minister does stand up and speak in the next few minutes, I anticipate that she will say three things. She will underline the point, made by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, that the Lord Chief Justice is a lawyer, although she may not make that point quite as strongly as she would have done had the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, not spoken in the intervening period. Nevertheless, given the fate ofthe noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor over the past few years, it may well be just a matter of time before there is no requirement for the Lord Chief Justice to be a lawyer, either. I hope that it will not come to that.
	Two other points that I know the Minister will make deserve more weight in my reply. First, we already have the guarantee of the Nolan procedure to select the chairman of the Legal Services Board. The noble Baroness is right: the rules will apply. But the advertisement and terms of reference for the appointment are drafted solely by the Government. The chairman of the selection committee is almost invariably a senior civil servant. Although I have enormous respect for the Civil Service, particularly for its senior branch, that is an insufficient guarantee of the independence that your Lordships' House seeks.
	Secondly, the Minister will say that the Legal Services Board is a regulatory authority and that the chairman will be like the chairman of any other regulatory authority, such as that for electricity, gas or communications—Ofcom, for example. In those circumstances, the Secretary of State always has the last word on who gets the post, so why should it be any different for legal services?
	The Minister will say that legal services are just like those other public services. That argument is totally misleading. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, the former Lord Chief Justice, put his finger on the essential reason why: the intimate link between the independence of the judiciary and that of the Bar and the solicitor's profession. The link is particularly close because of our adversarial system. When a judge listens to counsel arguing in front of him, he takes it for granted that they are people of probity, that all the evidence relevant to the case will be brought before him by those lawyers and that nothing will be hidden. If one or other of those lawyers knows something that is adverse to his case, he will put that evidence before the court. If you do not have an independent legal profession appearing in front of the judiciary, the judiciary cannot take independent decisions, because it does not have independent and dispassionate evidence on which to base them. You cannot have an independent judiciary without an independent legal profession appearing in front of it.
	Why, on the one hand, were the Government so obsessed with ensuring that the selection of judges be done wholly separately from the government mechanism by the Judicial Appointments Commission, with another commission to select that, yet in this case they endorse a selection that is done solely by somebody who everybody now accepts is likely to be, in future, a person without a legal qualification? The independence of the judiciary and the profession are intimately linked. The approach of the Judicial Appointments Commission, and the manner in which it is appointed, is the correct one for the appointment of the chairman of the Legal Services Board. I urge the Minister to be influenced by what she has heard tonight and to change her position on the amendment.

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, got one out of three right. I have absolutely no intention of treading anywhere near referring to the Lord Chief Justice as a lawyer and I was not going to say that this is like any other regulatory body, because it is not. The noble Lord was right that I will talk about the process. I see the Benches filling up, so I already sense my fate. I want noble Lords to have information about the procedure as it would be, however, so that they can make their decisions at least with that in mind.
	First, I have had the privilege—as a non-lawyer, of course—of knowing two Lord Chief Justices: the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, and the present incumbent, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers. They have both given me the benefit of their great wisdom and it has been an enormous privilege to know them. They are also great fun, as noble Lords will know. However, there is something to be said for the fact that, until I became a Minister, I did not really understand the role of the Lord Chief Justice or where he sits in the hierarchy. I am not trying to take anything away from that, but we must recognise that not everybody automatically understands what his function is or can differentiate it in quite the way that noble Lords obviously can. I did not. I do not consider myself either unintelligent or incapable of understanding how the courts work, but I would not have been able to describe it properly.
	I shall explore the themes of trust and independence. On trust, the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy of Lour, quite reasonably said that perhaps the Lord Chief Justice and the senior judiciary would have greater standing than politicians. The noble Baroness is right. I was looking at some polling evidence on whom people trust, because I do that kind of thing. Politicians do not do very well. We do better than tabloid journalists and people like that, but we do not do anything like as well as the judiciary, which has gone up in people's standing in the past12 months. As a member of the Department for Constitutional Affairs, I am proud of that. It is important that the respect and admiration for our judiciary continue to be promoted, pushed and supported by the department. It is also incredibly important for our democracy and society. Trust is an important part of this. When we think about the trust in the system, it is important that we recognise what we are trying to do with this legislation.
	Noble Lords are concerned about independence. Partly, their worries concern what might happen in the Ministry of Justice. When we were in Committee, I did not know that it was to be announced; I heard about it probably only several hours before your Lordships did. The idea has been in the air for as long as I can remember. On occasion, I joke that, because I work in the European Union, I do not often talk about the Department for Constitutional Affairs because nobody understands what it is. I tend to shorthand it to "Ministry of Justice" or something like that. For me, the changes will simply be a continuation of that. I do not yet know the detail of what the changes will mean, not least for my own role in your Lordships' House, which I suspect will expand rather than contract in terms of the amount of work—I can't wait. However, I understand that there is an important aspect about where eventually accountability for the Ministry of Justice may sit, whether in your Lordships' House or in another place.
	The responsibilities laid out for the Lord Chancellor remain. They are set out clearly in the Constitutional Reform Act. The fact that someone is not a lawyer, or indeed not a Lord, does not mean that they would not take those responsibilities seriously. I say that as a non-lawyer because I hope that noble Lords recognise that I take my responsibilities very seriously. In another place, there are people of extremely high calibre on all Benches who I think would be suitable. However, I am rooting for the current Lord Chancellor, as noble Lords would expect.
	I take what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, said about the concordat. It does not form part of legislation; it is a separate document. He is right to refer to the spirit of the concordat. It is not in the Bill, but it is taken very seriously by my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor. In making the appointments, we have always made clear the need to consult different people, including, I am quite sure, the Lord Chief Justice, as part and parcel of what may happen.
	The argument rests on what should be in the Bill and what we are trying to achieve. The critical issue raised in all the contributions—and they were very powerful—was to ensure that the process is independent. The Commissioner for Public Appointments, appointed by Her Majesty the Queen, is independent of government. We should be very proud of OCPA because it sets the standards for recruiting. It regulates the recruitment process for appointment to public bodies wherever government Ministers are involved. I have witnessed and experienced that process and I know that it is very rigorous. There is no question of independence being relegated. Codes of practice have to be maintained. It is critical that there is equality of opportunity, probity, openness, transparency and proportionality. Those are essential elements in making sure that appointments are made properly and appropriately.
	We believe that we have an independent process that is absolutely clear and has worked extremely well. We believe that it is recognised as being of an extremely high standard and that it will not affect the independence of the legal profession, or indeed of the judiciary. We believe that it will stand us in good stead. In no circumstances does it prevent the Lord Chancellor from talking to and consulting the Lord Chief Justice or, indeed, anybody else. Noble Lords will remember that the board will have a majority of lay people sitting on it. Initially, for the first appointment, it will have a lay chair. There may well be other people that the Lord Chancellor would wish to consult in the process of appointments. Indeed, one of the arguments made—in Committee, we discussed whether to put this in the Bill—is that there are other bodies that noble Lords would be comfortable with the Lord Chancellor consulting, perhaps concurrently.
	I have discussed this matter at great length with my noble and learned friend and with the Minister with policy responsibility. We have considered it carefully. I am aware of the strength of feeling in your Lordships' House, but we believe that questions of trust and independence are satisfied by the process, which has held us in good stead for a series of key appointments that have already been made. I say that on the basis that I yield to no one in my respect for the Lord Chief Justice—both the present and the previous ones—and for the critical importance of the independence of the legal profession.

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, it is always nice to have a new issue to consider in the course of our deliberations. I have looked at what other regulatory bodies have been doing. Like the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, I can think of boards—I have sat on some of them—in which the chief executive plays one role and others play a different role. The best comparisons that I could think of were other bodies involved in regulation. Again, I am not trying to suggest that this is not a different, even unique, set of circumstances. None the less, comparisons can be drawn.
	We looked particularly at the examples of Ofcom and the FSA, which have identical arrangements to those proposed for the boards in this legislation. Indeed, we looked again at Sir David Clementi's original work, and this was his favoured approach. It brings together the executive and non-executive functions and allows the chief executive, who has an incredibly important role, as the noble Lord will agree, to help to drive the strategic direction of the board. In some organisations that I can think of,the finance director may well be a full member of the board too, because of his responsibilities for finance. Again, that is not necessarily the case, but the Bill allows for someone involved in that way to be part of the board. This is simply the choice that we have made. We think that it is better, in this context, to follow the example of Ofcom and the FSA and bring together the executive and non-executive functions to get that strategic direction. Again, this refers back to Sir David Clementi. I, too, am grateful to the Law Society of Scotland for raising this issue with us, because it gives us a chance to consider it. Having considered the matter, however, I am pretty content that our approach will be a good one and that it will give the chief executive a proper footing on the board to enable it to have appropriate direction.

Lord Hunt of Wirral: My Lords, it is fascinating that the Minister should give the example of the Financial Services Authority. If I recall correctly, the original proposal for the FSA was that the chairman and chief executive should be the same person. Indeed, I moved an amendment to the then Financial Services and Markets Bill suggesting that it was wrong for the person who was chairman and chief executive to sit on the board because they were very different roles. As I recall, the Government initially resisted that amendment. However, this House insisted on its view, and the Government eventually conceded and split the role, but not until Howard Davies had moved on. It was a wonderful compromise. It is therefore quite remarkable that the Minister should choose that example. In many ways, it was not what the Government wanted; they wanted the chairman and chief executive to be the same person. They used the same arguments for Ofcom and a number of other regulators by saying thatthere was no place for corporate governance; namely, that there should be a separate chairman and chief executive.
	I do not want to embark on a great battle of the boards, but I could start reciting a whole list of boards on which the chief executive does not sit, particularly when he is the accounting officer and offers advice and guidance to the board. I therefore hope that the Minister will think again about this in the light of my comments and that she might find some better examples that would persuade us. In the mean time, however, I will carefully reflect on what she has said. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Lord Kingsland: My Lords, AmendmentNo. 12 deals with the powers of the Lord Chancellor in paragraph 1(3) to determine the size of the Legal Services Board. In particular, the paragraph states:
	"The Lord Chancellor may by order amend sub-paragraph (1) by substituting for the limit on the maximum number of persons for the time being specified in paragraph (c) of that sub-paragraph a different limit".
	Some of your Lordships may recall that this matter was raised on the first day of Committee. I raised it to express my concern about the scope that the wording of the provision might give to the Secretary of State, now the Lord Chancellor, for manipulating the size of the board, perhaps for malign purposes. In response, the Minister was exceedingly anxious to reassure me that the purpose of the provision was entirely benign; that there might be occasions in the future when it would be necessary to grant the Legal Services Board a wider range of functions. In that context the board would need to be supplemented by one or more individuals.
	I apologise to the House for quoting the noble Baroness at some length, but it is germane to the point that I wish to tease out. She said:
	"The issue that the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, raises is that the Lord Chancellor may be able to sneak something under the wire by negative procedure".
	The power to expand the board in Schedule 1 is by negative resolution. She continued:
	"One way in which to address his concerns would be for me to take the matter away to allow us to make it an affirmative rather than negative resolution. That would mean that, if the numbers were to be expanded, it would have to come through a debate in this Chamber and another place, so nothing could be done that would suggest that the Secretary of State was trying to increase the numbers for other reasons. The noble Lord also has the knowledge of my remarks, which are in Hansard, about the purposes to which the provision will be put. If there were other purposes, the Minister—whether it was me or another Minister—would have to explain in full detail to this Chamber and in another place precisely what was being done and why".—[Official Report, 9/1/07; col. 163.]
	So, at the suggestion of the noble Baroness, I have tabled my amendment for an affirmative resolution, which I invite her to support. I beg to move.

Lord Kingsland: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Baroness for her reply; but I will not disguise from your Lordships' House my dismay at hearing it. I will not press the noble Baroness about the status of her statement at col. 163 of the Official Report on 9 January 2007. However, if it is not a commitment, it is as close to a commitment that one could possibly get. The decision by the noble Baroness not to support an affirmative resolution undermines her earlier statement about the motives of the Government in including this provision in the first place. The noble Baroness said that the proof that the Government have honourable intentions will be through the ability of your Lordships' House to have a debate when the affirmative resolution is tabled.
	The noble Baroness gave one or two other reasons for the fact that she thought again about an affirmative resolution, but I must say that I found them exceedingly unconvincing. The idea that the Government have now decided to move away, as a constitutional practice, from tabling affirmative resolutions is risible. Bills nowadays are characteristically skeleton Bills and one sees no change in Government legislative policy.
	I do not accept that a negative order is the sameas an affirmative resolution. There are strong constitutional conventions about praying against negative orders, which the House—I hope the noble Baroness will agree with me—respects. I shall not press this to a vote, but I will seriously consider bringing forward this matter at Third Reading. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, it is not in the Bill; it is the practice that is currently used by the Government. The Government have the commissioner, as well as a transparent process. The noble Lord himself has looked at the workings of the code of practice and so on, and that is the basis on which appointments are made. It is not in legislation, not least because the code of practice and the way appointments are made are updated from time to time, based on current best practice and best thinking. I am sure that over the years your Lordships' House has had many debates, not least with the noble Lord, Lord Neill of Bladen, about making sure that there is an opportunity to update best practice and to be mindful of changes that could be made. It is not in the Bill; it is, however, the way in which public appointments are made where Ministers are involved. That has been the way of it, certainly so long as I have been a Minister. We follow the guidance on the basis of the detail I have already given about transparency, openness and so on.
	I turn to who makes the appointments. The noble Lord is right that the way the guidance works is that the panel is chaired by a senior civil servant, but it is not run by them, except in so far as they have a responsibility as chair to ensure that the processis followed properly, that people participate appropriately, that the candidates are treated fairly and so on. They may indeed ask questions themselves, because they have a clear interest, but earlier today in Questions we were talking about the importance of the senior Civil Service and of its independence, in the context of a desire, from the Liberal Democrat Benches in particular, for a Civil Service Bill. None the less, it is important—I think noble Lords would concur with this—that the senior Civil Service is independent, acts with probity and pursues this policy and practice appropriately. That is who chairs it. That is how the appointments have been made. To my knowledge there has been no suggestion that they are handled with anything other than independence and probity. In addition, there is an independent assessor from the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments who sits on the panel and makes sure that the OCPA code of practice is followed. So there is already a senior civil servant, plus the independent assessor who ensures that the code is followed, and then there has to be at least one other member of the panel, someone who the OCPA code says represents a public body or other industry groups. In this context that could include a consumer or legal professional, or whatever was felt to be appropriate.
	The guidance says,
	"there may also be, where appropriate, a technical, medical or scientific expert when a specific area of expertise of applicants needs to be tested".
	That would enable the panel to have the additional expertise of someone who had the necessary technical knowledge. Taken as a whole, the guidance ensures that we have the right level of expertise and of impartiality.
	When there is no final decision on the composition of the panel, there have been discussions about what kind of expertise there might be, and, through the implementation working group, what kind of individual might most appropriately be involved.

On Question, Whether the said amendment(No. 16) shall be agreed to?
	Their Lordships divided: Contents, 98; Not-Contents, 124.

Lord Blaker: rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what policies they are adopting regarding the situation in Zimbabwe.
	My Lords, I pay tribute to all noble Lords who have come here to make a two-minute speech. Those who are going to speak should not thank me or congratulate me on this debate because that just takes time.
	A few weeks ago we had reason to be optimistic about Zimbabwe. The two leading figures in ZANU-PF under Mugabe appeared to be agreed, in spite of their mutual rivalry, on denying Mugabe the opportunity of extending his presidency for six or more years. The International Crisis Group believed that a realistic chance had at last begun to appear to resolve the Zimbabwe crisis. That prospect has disappeared in blood and brutality and through the feebleness of SADC.
	We have seen the full horror of Mugabe's regime reflected in the battered faces of leaders of the opposition taking part in a peaceful prayer meeting. We have seen young men, no doubt trained in violence in the green bomber brigades, being issued with police uniforms to give them a semblance of authority to conduct violence against the innocent.
	The courage of those at that meeting, completely unarmed, was remarkable. Random assaults by the police have been reported to continue for days. A woman member of the British Embassy, who had been visiting the injured in hospital, was told in the government-owned newspaper:
	"It will be a pity for her family to welcome her at Heathrow Airport in a body bag".
	So alarmed were the SADC governments by the violence, that a summit meeting was called in Dar es Salaam. These are some of the extracts from the communiqué of the meeting.
	"The... Summit recalled that free fair and democratic Presidential elections were held in 2002 in Zimbabwe... The ... Summit appealed for the lifting of all forms of sanctions against Zimbabwe... The... Summit mandated Thabo Mbeki to come to facilitate dialogue between the Opposition and the Government and report back on the progress".
	Not surprisingly after that, Mugabe returned home in triumph. He proceeded to get agreement from ZANU-PF to increase the number of Members of Parliament from 150 to 210, with the bulk of the new constituencies in the rural areas where ZANU-PF is strong. Voting in the senate will be altered to the advantage of ZANU-PF. The constitution will be changed so that when an elected president dies or retires his successor will be chosen by Parliament and not by direct elections as at present.
	South Africa is now in the UN Security Council, and was last month its president. Its record in that body is interesting. On a mild motion criticising Myanmar, alias Burma, calling for national reconciliation and release of political prisoners, and other measures not even including sanctions, South Africa cast a no vote—it voted against that mild resolution. It also used its position in the presidency to block debate on violent repression of the opposition in Zimbabwe. Archbishop Tutu, who with Vaclav Havel had taken part in reporting on conditions in Burma, said:
	"I am deeply disappointed by our vote. It is a betrayal of our noble past".
	He is, as we know, a Nobel Prize winner. He has also criticised the Government of South Africa on their stand in the Security Council on Zimbabwe.
	President Mbeki, as we all know, has had extraordinary views, which defied modern medical knowledge, on the question of HIV and AIDS. He is clearly capable of major misjudgments or self-deception and his record casts grave doubt on his suitability, to use the words of the Dar es Salaam communiqué, to facilitate dialogue between the opposition and the Government of Zimbabwe. It is not surprising that his so-called quiet diplomacy between ZANU-PF and the opposition in Zimbabwe was not successful. It looked more like quiet protection for Mugabe.
	An interesting new light has been cast on the role of President Mbeki in relation to Zimbabwe by the remarks of Moeletsi Mbeki in a BBC Radio 4 "Today" programme a couple of weeks ago. He is a South African business man, brother of the president, who worked as a journalist in Zimbabwe. Asked by Edward Stourton what we should make of what happened at the SADC meeting in Dar es Salaam he replied as follows:
	"There is something which is overlooked. Mugabe has the same adversaries that many African Governments in Southern Africa have. These are the trade unions and the non-governmental organisations who are pressing for policies that favour the majority of the people whereas the Governments are following policies in general that favour the elite. It is never going to happen for African Governments to pressurise Mugabe but a large number of the African people are opposed to Mugabe".
	Those words cast the most illuminating light on President Mbeki's behaviour that I can remember. They do the same for the behaviour of SADC heads of Government in Dar es Salaam. I doubt that we should put much hope on success for President Mbeki in the role given to him by the SADC summit.
	What should be our policy towards Zimbabwe now, in a situation which is worse than any other since Mugabe set out on his regime of terror seven years ago? There is one course that could succeed that has not been followed—that is, firm action by the G8. The Prime Minister, in a speech on 2 October 2001, called for,
	"a partnership for Africa between the developed and the developing world based around a new African initiative. It's there to be done if we find the will. On our side provide more aid untied to trade, write off debt, help with good governance and infrastructure"—
	and other suggestions. He continued by saying that,
	"it is a partnership. On the African side: true democracy, no more excuses for dictatorship, abuses of human rights, no tolerance of bad governments from the endemic corruption of some states to the activities of Mr Mugabe's henchmen in Zimbabwe... the state of Africa is a scar on the conscience of the world".
	I say Zimbabwe is a scar on the conscience of Africa. Some countries in Africa are not living up to their part in the partnership. Early in this decade, President Mbeki seemed to cast doubt on the validity of the partnership, declaring that the problems of Africa should be left to Africans to resolve. But the present situation in Zimbabwe is so grave that it calls for a new and bold approach.
	Almost all the African countries have joined the African Union, which replaced the OAU, which was wound up in failure a few years ago. The AU treaty committed its members to observe good governance, human rights and the rule of law and to use peer pressure to achieve them. The treaty for the SADC contained very similar obligations; Mugabe is in major breach of both treaties.
	In two months' time the next meeting of the G8 will take place in Germany under the chairmanship of Chancellor Merkel, who has been displaying considerable skill and determination. I have suggested in each of the past two years that the annual G8 meeting, which is attended regularly by President Mbeki, who will also attend the next one, and other world leaders, should be used by the G8 to persuade him and any other African leaders who may be present, that the Zimbabwe problem must be resolved. The eight most economically powerful countries in the world should be able to persuade the countries of southern Africa, through President Mbeki, of the great importance of living up to their solemn obligations in the AU and SADC, as well as NePAD. It would be very much to the advantage of both sides in the partnership.
	Mugabe is turning Zimbabwe into a failed state. It is time that we made it clear to the members of SADC, the AU and NePAD that the time has come to stop the rot.

Baroness Park of Monmouth: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Luce, and I must meet, because I had intended to speak about a possible Commonwealth initiative, about which I am in touch with the Secretariat. I prefer to denounce the appalling treatment being meted out to members of civil society and the MDC, with 28 cases so far in the past three weeks, among them two Members of Parliament. That needs to go on the record.
	Violent beatings and torture have left innocent men and women blinded, deaf and unable to talk, quite apart from many broken limbs. They are told variously: "We are going to take you one by one. By 2008, there will be no MDC. We'll kill you all so that the party does not succeed"; "If we hear of you at the MDC offices or at a rally, we shall kill you. You will just disappear"; "Go home and you will find your wife and children are not there". As well as being brutally beaten, prisoners are denied food, water and medicines and are said to have resisted arrest.
	The list of victims includes a respected black cameraman, abducted and beaten to death, and two MPs. The CIO claims that it is looking for petrol bombs, but, it says: "This is about death. If you do not admit to one of three offences, you will die. Leave Zimbabwe within seven days or you disappear".
	All the cases, and this is only from a list covering the past few weeks, have had this in common: they were abducted in the middle of the night. Most have been brutally beaten and tortured; all have been denied access to their lawyers, visits by friends and family, food, access to vital medication as well as medical care and worst of all their constitutional and legal rights to be released on the orders of the Attorney-General. The rule of law has broken down. I hope that the names of all the torturers, many of whom are known, will be posted daily on the internet.
	I have one question: many of those being tortured are students and young people. How many childrenof ZANU-PF Ministers are peacefully studying in this country, some claiming to have MDC sympathies?

The Earl of Sandwich: My Lords, all the indicators point to a degree of deterioration unknown even in the poorest African countries. This is especially dangerous for a developed country that cannot easily rebuild its institutions. There is also an endemic agricultural crisis. We can hardly imagine the feelings of ordinary people, especially those in Matabeleland outside the ZANU-PF patronage who have been trodden down for such a long time. With the police now routinely arresting and humiliating opponents and disregarding court orders, the law is not an adequate protection.
	Like my noble friend, I believe that President Mbeki will in the end recognise that Mr Mugabe is an obstruction in the way of political stability and that Africa cannot carry him indefinitely. President Mbeki was surely at least behind the SADC initiative and has offered to hold direct talks with the MDC and ZANU-PF.
	None of us is in doubt of the evil of the regime. We have to go on speaking out about it. At the same time, it is important for us in Britain to appreciate the depth of the southern African apartheid legacy and we must be careful of the language of crisis. It is easy to say that when people are dying any cautious approach is appeasement. Like my noble friends, I expect that the end will come not from clever diplomacy, which has failed, but from inside—yet I know that that will be at the cost of more violence and bloodshed.
	Meanwhile, we must not be diverted from the other important issues. In 2006, the number of rural food insecure people totalled 1.4 million, and this year it could return to the acute level of 2002—around4 million. How will Her Majesty's Government continue to support the food aid programme? Why has DfID stopped its protracted relief programme for 12 months at such a crucial stage, and how will it support the most vulnerable after this July? Are we losing the battle against HIV/AIDS in Zimbabwe?
	Finally, will the Minister comment on the possible stalemate which is coming up at the EU-ACP summit in Lisbon, to which Mr Mugabe has been invited?

Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, it takes a lot of time to prepare a two-minute speech, and we have heard an enormous amount of wisdom packed into an amazingly short and brisk debate. This is no place for an opposition wind-up speech in the usual sense and I simply ask the following questions.
	First, where, in the Government's view, do we now turn? Can the Minister give us any glimmers of hope? Clearly, things are changing. There are growing splits within ZANU-PF. How clear is it to this Government that the senior party leaders of ZANU-PF are really fed up with the ageing tyrant and his policies of terror and their effects, or is he going to outmanoeuvre them yet again?
	Secondly, at least SADC, the Southern African Development Community, seems in a way to have woken up with the appointment of Mbeki to mediate between the parties. Perhaps, as noble Lords have indicated, this will lead nowhere as usual, but at least Zimbabwe is now seen as a SADC issue—and not before time. Is this the opportunity for real pressures of a new kind to be developed? Can the Minister give us some thoughts on that?
	Thirdly—I note that this is more of a hope than a fact—the whole Commonwealth, which Zimbabwe left in 2003, has a stronger role and voice to offer in giving backbone and resolve to Zimbabwe's neighbours before that country drags them all down. Like the noble Lord, Lord Luce, and others, I can never understand—nor, incidentally, can our overseas partners—why we here do not play the Commonwealth card more vigorously. We have one of the richest and most powerful transcontinental networks in the world and we should make much more use of it.
	Finally, there are the international institutions—the EU, the UN and perhaps the G8, as the noble Lord, Lord Blaker, suggested in initiating this excellent short debate. The EU has sanctions on travel by Zimbabwean ruling personnel, as we know, but frankly these sanctions keep on being breached. They were breached yet again in Belgium the other day. They should be extended to whole families and they should be much tougher. We should like to hear what propositions the Government have on that front.
	As for the UN Security Council, I know that HMG try to keep raising the issue, but they should go on trying, and trying again to raise a matter that may not yet be one of international peace and security, but which could become so in this network world if the whole of southern Africa is infected, as it probably will be.
	It is the people of Zimbabwe—there are still many brave ones left—in whose hands the escape from this appalling downward spiral lies. That nation must save itself. We here should not be deterred by propaganda or lies from acting at every point we can. We would be failing in our duty if we did not stand ready to help, and support to our utmost, the people of Zimbabwe in their deep torment and suffering as they face the collapse of their nation.

Lord Triesman: My Lords I join all those who have thanked the noble Lord, Lord Blaker, for having introduced another important debate on Zimbabwe. My thanks to all noble Lords who have undertaken an extraordinary task in distilling so many important points into so few minutes. I thank all of them for that and shall do my best to address the crucial issues that have been raised.
	The timing of this debate, as we know, coincides with a particularly brutal period—the past month being probably the most brutal of the lot—in Zimbabwe. As the noble Baroness, Lady Park, said, there are plain examples of that brutality. Mugabe's security apparatus has embarked on an odious, country-wide campaign of violence and intimidation in a determined effort to try to offset its increasing lack of support in the country. Human rights defenders, independent journalists and opposition members have in the past few weeks all faced harassment, torture and, in some cases, death at the hands of Mugabe's security apparatus. Their only crime has been to dare to work and campaign for a better future for their country. I am sure that everybody in this House will join me in applauding all of those who have shown such courage in the face of such hostility.
	I also deplore the threats that have been made to one of our own diplomats, which were referred to in the debate. He has been conducting normal diplomatic duties. We, of course, have the Zimbabwean ambassador on that matter, and on the matter of the parliamentarians who were savagely beaten on their way to Brussels. We have raised all those crimes of violence.
	I look at the realities as other noble Lords have done. We see a wrecked economy—there is no other way of describing it. It is not alarmist or extravagant to make the point that this economy has imploded.As somebody who has spent a good deal of his professional career as an economist, I make the point that no economy in the world that I know of has ever recovered of its own volition from the depth of crisis that this economy now experiences. It has been plundered.
	The official rate of inflation went through 2,200 per cent at the end of last week, and we all know that it is probably double that. It was a land of plenty, which has become a land of destitution. My noble friend Lord Kinnock is right to say that it has become a place from which there is mass emigration to neighbouring countries. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Howell, that peace and security are often fundamentally disturbed by large movements of people across international borders with no food and no capacity to sustain themselves or their families. That may well be exactly the kind of thing that the United Nations should have focused on and must do so now, given its past failure to focus.
	I do not know whether I have any encouragement or encouraging words for the noble Lord, Lord Waddington. I know of and have great respect for the work done by the Overseas Service Pensioners Association, but I do not think that any Government in the recent past have been able in any simple way to take on the debts that have arisen out of pensions and the collapse of regimes.
	How different all this could have been if the agreement described by the noble Lord, Lord Luce, had been sustained. I shall not go through the statistics—they are so well known to your Lordships' House—on the nature of the collapse in Zimbabwe. It would take time, and would not be particularly helpful because nobody denies the truth about the economic and humanitarian enormity of the collapse.
	I have no doubt that most Zimbabweans understand the problems they face and the solutions required. Many, even in ZANU-PF, know the party has to change or lose all credibility. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, asked whether we see splits that may be of some benefit. I know that some leading members of that regime have been rather slower than they have in the past to climb on the Mugabe bandwagon. We must pay careful attention to that, not in a way which labels them in a manner making it impossible for them to operate, but one recognising that there are fundamental changes. Mugabe, of course, opposes all reform and continuously blames others for the crisis he has created, even to the extent of threatening international diplomats based in Harare, as I have said.
	The United Kingdom shares the region's desire to see Zimbabweans recover. There is no UK agenda other than the decent recovery of that country, but it is increasingly obvious to all that the present policies pursued by that Government are a barrier of the most profound kind to Zimbabwe's road to recovery. Mugabe's policies must change, or someone who can introduce new policies must be there, for any hope of a better future for ordinary Zimbabweans. The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, asked what we were doing. I shall try to answer that, although he will appreciate that trying to "ensure", as he put it, free and fair elections is something we can influence, but not achieve directly of our own volition. We can certainly try.
	As my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary said in another place, there is considerable concern across the international community about the situation I have described. The United Kingdom's concern is shared by the European Union and many in the wider international community, particularly in Africa. SADC has shown for the first time that it is willing to discuss a matter which it has steadfastly refused to discuss on all previous occasions. So we must work closely with all of these bodies to sustain international pressure on the Mugabe Government. On those issues where we can exert pressure but have not so far done so, the noble Baroness, Lady Park, asked me how many children of the regime are in university. I tell the noble Baroness candidly that I do not know, but I am determined to find out.
	We have maintained a firm EU policy, including the use of targeted measures. They have put pressure on the leaders of the regime, and underline the EU's position. We have recently achieved the roll forward of those pressures, although not everybody in Europe was entirely confident that that was the right thing to do. They were content with our pressure, but I believe that rolling forward was absolutely right and we were successful in doing so. We must try to extend those measures. They are inadequate. They certainly punish Mugabe and his ruling clique, but are not intended to punish the ordinary people of Zimbabwe. I am with the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, on this: we check, and must ensure that we continue to do so. We must be certain that the measures in place are as effective as intended.
	I say to the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, that there has been no invitation to Mugabe for any EU conference held with Africa. My understanding is that nobody wishes to see the agreed sanctions stood down. We will continue to maintain the United Nations' focus on Zimbabwe as well. That has included a strong statement: a number of nations have associated themselves at the Human Rights Council on 29 March, expressing their deep concern at the situation in Zimbabwe and calling for special rapporteurs. Briefings at the UN Security Council, most recently on 29 March, about the deteriorating humanitarian situation were among the first and most serious discussions we have seen. Visits by envoys of the UN Secretary-General have been important. The role of the new Secretary-General and what he might say were asked about. On 12 March, he made a hard-hitting statement condemning the brutality used against peaceful protestors. We believe that he is willing to continue to exert that pressure, which I welcome.
	We will continue to support those working for peaceful democratic dialogue in Zimbabwe through the development of civil society programmes, which we support. Whatever the brutality visited on many of those people, I am with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark in applauding the work of most religious groups and leaders. The Archbishop of Bulawayo has played an exemplary role, and deserves not just our support but our heartfelt thanks.
	We are discussing with partners how the international community can best support the people of Zimbabwe, if and when there is a Government willing to turn from their present course and undertake serious and genuine political and economic reform. There are a number of ways in which we could increase that pressure; they have come up in your Lordships' debate. The noble Lord, Lord Blaker, made the point that the G8 could do more. I assure him and the House that we are pushing for the matter to be on the agenda of the G8 and will continue to do so.
	The noble Lord, Lord Luce, and others, raised the role that the Commonwealth may play. I say to him and the noble Baroness, Lady D'Souza, that the Commonwealth in planning its conference is none too keen to reintroduce matters which took up almost the whole of the Commonwealth conference not too long ago. None the less, I see the strength of the argument and I am certainly prepared to argue it with the Commonwealth Secretariat.
	I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Luce, that through the Commonwealth and the United Nations, the mobilisation for the tools of recovery are absolutely vital. I also share with the noble Viscount, Lord Goshen, the fundamental point that, if there is just another leader like Mugabe, pouring additional resources, or trying to make these arrangements in circumstances which have not changed fundamentally, will not succeed. For those reasons, it is a matter of changing and securing different policies. My noble friend Lord Anderson was quite right to say that we have the advantage of being able to build on some existing strength; and we have to make sure we do.
	Africans are highly critical, as the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, said. Many individual Africans have been bravely outspoken. We pursue the issues repeatedly with the African organisations and states. We have urged at every stage a stronger African response. I have raised the Zimbabwean issue regularly with African Ministers—I think with every one I have ever met—as do my colleagues and officials. The noble Viscount, Lord Goshen, described it as "constant pressure". I say to my noble friend Lord Acton that this has been at the centre of my discussions with President Mbeki on all occasions, and—I say to the noble Earl, Lord Caithness—with other former leaders who might have influence, such as President Chisano. It has been a constant theme of the work we are doing.
	Following the recent escalation in violence, I am pleased to tell the House that, as many noble Lords will know, the Prime Minister has spoken to President Mbeki and President Kikwete of Tanzania. They made clear to him—this is their contribution to the conversation rather than the Prime Minister's—that the tragedy in Zimbabwe is now having a significant impact on them and their region. It is a direct impact; it is also a social impact. They see the situation also as liable to get worse rather than better.
	How do I assess this African intervention? My assessment in the past has been that it has been lacklustre. I think everybody knows my view on that. Quiet diplomacy has been urged on me. I believe that it has mostly been silent rather than quiet. But it is now audible and change is potentially unstoppable.
	In saying these things, of course we all must make sure that the failed attempts of the past—including President Mbeki's attempts, which the noble Lord, Lord St John of Bletso, mentioned—culminate in the present attempt being more successful. We must relentlessly exert pressure. But I echo the point made by my noble friend Lord Anderson. This must be done in a way, as Morgan Tsvangirai has made clear to us, that does not undermine the efforts of those in the country who will have to bear the greatest weight in the changes we are trying to achieve. There is absolutely no point in destroying the credentials of those who may very well emerge as the leaders we need in the new Zimbabwe, whatever accommodations have to be made in order to achieve that result. When a key opposition leader makes those points, we must listen very carefully to them and show proper respect.
	I can assure the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark and the noble Lord, Lord Best, that we are continuing work to provide aid. DfID has put £35 million into HIV/AIDS—a matter the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, asked about—in an attempt to bring down its prevalence in that country; €200 million have been given by EU states; and the United Kingdom alone disbursed nearly €60 million in bilateral assistance. These are not the actions of nations that are not interested in the well-being of the people of Zimbabwe rather than the problems of its rulers.
	I say to the noble Lord, Lord Best, that Anna Tabijuka is unlikely to be welcome to return to make another report. I share his view, but we will have to find either someone like her or others who will continue to put on that pressure. I perfectly appreciate what he said about the homelessness organisations and I should like to know more about them.
	We intend to maintain that pressure and to work in difficult circumstances for the outcome that this House plainly wants. During his Easter message on 8 April, His Holiness the Pope made clear that Zimbabwe is in the grip of a crisis. It echoes the sentiments expressed throughout the international community condemning Mugabe's actions and supporting the brave Zimbabweans who have stood up against the regime.
	We must all—we in this country in particular—play our role, strongly supporting the steps towards a new democracy, towards fair elections, towards a different outcome for the people of Zimbabwe—without, as I have said, damaging the opposition. We will continue to ensure that the targeted measures of the EU are in place. We will make sure that those who violate human rights and subvert the rule of law are targeted. We support all those working for peaceful and democratic dialogue—including WUSA, if I may say so to the noble Baroness, Lady D'Souza. We will make sure that we are supporting them as well.
	In two days' time, the Government of Zimbabwe will hold celebrations for Zimbabwe's independence day—27 years after independence was declared. Independence from what? Are these people truly free? This House has expressed its view tonight and I hope that they House will feel that I have expressed the Government's view tonight: they cannot express their basic rights. They cannot choose the Government without a beating or worse from the police. That is unacceptable and we will play our part in turning round that grievous disaster.

Lord Kingsland: My Lords, as I am sure that the noble Baroness is well aware, the amendment is identical in terms to Amendment No. 31, tabled in Committee. It generated a short debate which is to be found in Hansard of 9 January 2007 at cols. 173 to 176. The background to the amendment—I do not intend to go into as much detail as I did in Committee—isthe reaction of the Government to one of the recommendations of the Joint Committee. That recommendation essentially endorsed Sir David Clementi's recommendation that the manner of regulation for the Legal Services Board should be not direct but supervisory.
	In their response to the Joint Committee, the Government said:
	"The Government agrees that the intention of the Legal Services Board should be to work in partnership with the authorised regulators, leaving them with the responsibility for day to day regulation. The Legal Services Board should exercise its powers only where approved regulators are clearly failing".
	The amendment seeks to incorporate this notion into the Bill at this point. However, later amendments express precisely the same principle in rather different terms. I refer the Minister in particular to Amendment No. 174, which I anticipate we will come to at some stage on Wednesday afternoon.
	The theme will be familiar to the Minister: the existing professional bodies should be the front-line regulators, and the Legal Services Board should have a supervisory role, intervening only if it believes that a front-line regulator is failing in its duty in some way or another. The Minister seemed to endorse this approach at various points in Committee. However, she was reluctant to have it reflected in the Bill.
	With the greatest possible respect to her, this is not satisfactory. Once the Legal Services Board is up and running, it will inform itself on the basis of the words of the statute itself, and there will undoubtedly be a temptation for it to over-regulate. An amendment such as this would make it absolutely clear to the board what the limits of its regulatory powers are. The Government are on record as fully supporting the approach that is reflected in the amendment. Will the Minister therefore reflect what the Government's response is by agreeing to the amendment? I beg to move.

Lord Maclennan of Rogart: My Lords, no part of this Bill more exemplifies the gap which has opened up between the assertions of Ministers about their purposes and the language of the legislation we are considering. It is fair to say that there is genuine anxiety on the part of frontline regulators about what is likely to develop. If steps are not taken by the Government to express in the Bill the purposes which have been eloquently expressed by the Minister, the Legal Services Board could become a behemoth. It will be required to supervise, but it has been given roles and powers which are ample and sufficient to enable it to grow far beyond the conception expressed by the Minister in debate. Without some clear curtailment of that possibility, it must be apprehended. The intentions of the Lord Chancellor and the purposes of Sir David Clementi will be deflected. It cannot be in the interests of the public that that should be so.
	Some parts of the regulation of legal services as they stand have not been seriously criticised; notably, the work of the Bar Council has been acknowledged to be efficient, effective and reasonably inexpensive. The defects addressed in this Bill are primarily those of the solicitors' professional response to complaints. No one on these Benches is unaware of the necessity of tackling this problem. We have been broadly at one with what the Government have said, but the gap is growing and the anxieties are increasing about what has been said and what is encompassed in the Bill.
	In Committee, my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford spoke in support of this amendment. It seemed almost inconceivable that some step would not be taken by the Government between Committee and Report stages to reflect what were perceived generally to be legitimate concerns, but that has not so far been forthcoming. Consequently, we must be left with the conclusion that there is to some extent a hidden agenda and that the Government look without concern at what is the probable consequence of failing to constrain the growth potential of the Legal Services Board.
	If this were being funded by the Treasury, the probability is that these concerns would have been acted on. But, as is well known and understood, it is being funded by the profession, which of course means that it will effectively be paid for in due course by the very consumers this supposedly seeks to protect. There is no division of interest between consumers and lawyers about this; rather there is an identity of concern that the regulation of the legal professions should be economical, effective and efficient, and should not comprise of layer on layer. I hope that the Government will undertake yet again to reconsider the position which has been taken up to now. I am very concerned that the lead regulators may see their positions being progressively eroded by a Legal Services Board with imperial ambitions. The Government and the noble Baroness have spoken about the lead responsibility resting with the approved regulators, but that is not provided for. Nothing in the Bill will ensure that that will happen. If the Minister cannot reassure the House, I do not doubt that we shall return to this, as will Members of another place.
	There has been an expression of view that to some extent lawyers are the enemies of consumers, one made with great force but, I have to say, not much conviction by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, whose presence of course we greatly welcome. However, it is not one that is necessarily shared by other protectors of the consumer. Erecting an elaborate and expensive system of regulation is not in the consumer interest. This argument needs to be rehearsed and repeated, and I hope that the Government will acknowledge it and take steps to allay the justifiable concerns which are increasingly being expressed.

Lord Hunt of Wirral: My Lords, I strongly support this amendment and I was pleased to add my name to those of my noble friends Lord Kingsland and Lord Campbell of Alloway, as well as that of the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan of Rogart. Partnership was very much a theme of the Joint Committee. We would like to see the Legal Services Board acting in partnership. The noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, has just raised the important issue of cost, about which one or two rumours are going around. Perhaps we could take the opportunity either in this debate or in a later one to try to put some credible figures to the stories which are running in the press at the present time.
	When the Government first looked at the whole issue in the light of Sir David Clementi's recommendations, most of those involved in the process and independent commentators were considering a new, streamlined regulatory system to be put together reasonably quickly which, provided Sir David Clementi's proposals were accepted, would be comparatively economical and thus welcomed by the professions. Indeed, it wasSir David Clementi who could see how a partnership would work. We have had a number of debates about this partnership that have already been referred to, but we are still waiting for the Minister to confirm how the new Legal Services Board will work. Will it rely on the frontline regulators to be in the front line and not be subject to day-to-day administrative interference? Obviously the Legal Services Board, in complying with the regulatory objectives, has an attitude in principle towards the way that regulation will evolve, but there is still a suspicion that unless we write something into the Bill along the lines of this amendment—and we are going to debate a number of subsequent amendments as well—we may well end up with something that duplicates, indeed triplicates, the existing system, which seems to be working reasonably well at present. The separation of the regulatory and representative functions has worked well, and some of the key individuals involved inspire confidence in the way the whole process is now evolving.
	If one's suspicions about costs—transitional costs in particular—become a reality, one has to question whether it is all in fact worth it. In order to reach a conclusion about that, we need to hear much more from the Minister.

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I am grateful for all contributions. This is an important issue of principle about the relationship between the frontline regulators and the Legal Services Board. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is right to raise the issue of cost, and I shall say a little bit about that.
	Let me be clear: there is no hidden agenda. The purpose we have set out for this regulatory framework is exactly the purpose that is replicated in the legislation. Our ambition is to have an overview regulator working with frontline regulators. I am resisting the amendment. We talked a lot in Committee about partnership and about how appropriately to define the relationship, which meant a number of things to noble Lords and to those organisations that were most concerned. First, it was important to ensure that the overview was not substituting itself for the work of the frontline regulator. Secondly, we had to ensure that the Legal Services Board operated appropriately against the regulatory objectives but used its ability to use the law to define what it wants to do only when it was necessary—we have talked a lot about that in the context of Clause 1—and to ensure that the dialogue between the frontline regulator and the Legal Services Board was appropriate and proper. We have described it in different terminology, but "partnership" is certainly a word that we have used from time to time to describe it, and I would endorse that.
	My difficulty was how that works when you put it in legislation and the problem of trying to restrain or constrain what the Legal Services Board is enabled to do, in terms of the work it must inevitably take on. We have also talked about our ambition that the frontline regulators operate properly, that the Legal Services Board does not use its powers and so forth, but let us assume for the moment that it must. It is about trying to ensure that it can operate effectively. The difficulty, when we looked at it from a legal perspective, was that, as noble Lords will know from their vast experience, both as Ministers and as legislators, there are problems with how words translate when you try to use them in a legal context, and "in partnership" created some difficulty.
	In my view the B-Plus model of regulation, which was David Clementi's recommendation, is the right one. It accepts that the oversight regulator and those it regulates need to work together in concert, as far as possible, in the work they do. My problem with the amendment is the restriction it could impose on the ability to take action when it is considered necessary to correct failure in an approved regulator. That is my difficulty with accepting the proposition. We have to ensure that in the legislation we have the flexibility for the oversight regulator to operate effectively. I completely agree that we do not want the micro-management about which noble Lords are concerned that second-guesses the decisions of approved regulators. I say that for two reasons; first, that is not its job; secondly, there is the cost, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has rightly mentioned and to which I shall come shortly.
	We do not want the Legal Services Board to use its power in a completely unrestrained way. There are clearly defined procedures in the legislation that it must follow, such as requirements for notification and consultation. As we stressed throughout the Committee stage, there is a need to follow best regulatory practice, and it must be proportionate and targeted. It can operate only where there is a clear need for it to do so and it can demonstrate that it must do so.
	As we discussed at length in Committee, Clause 48 requires the board—the word used is "must"—to issue policy statements about how it will use its powers, publish a draft of statements and consider any subsequent representations to be made to it. We believe that that gives approved regulators the opportunity to influence the policy of the board and the framework within which it will operate. I think that the policy statements provide the most appropriate and flexible way for the board to discharge its duties. They will enable the arrangements, in a sense, to be the best practice we can have. It is a requirement—it is not left to chance but is in Clause 48.
	We all recognise that constructive dialogue is essential. I see no reason to suggest in the legislation that that would not happen. I believe that the legal professional bodies will embrace the spirit of co-operation but in the end, the board must be free to act if it feels that it needs to. It may need to take difficult decisions and to take action which, it could be argued—

Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, I am obliged to the Minister for giving way. I have one simple question. There seems to be nothing much between us about the principle at stake as it has been expressed by all noble Lords. Can the noble Baroness conceive of a better way of implementing it other than that proposed by the amendment?

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I was not seeking to rest on Clause 48. The factors in the way that we set up the Legal Services Board—to be proportionate and to act only where necessary—are combined with a number of other issues. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, described this as being threaded through the Bill. The noble Lord sees that in a negative way: perhaps I can be more positive. If you add all of these things together you endup with a relationship between the supervisory regulatory body and the front-line regulators that I believe represents, in large part, what noble Lords are seeking. My difficulty is that there is no way of expressing that in terms that would not constrain the supervisory regulator in an inappropriate way. That is the problem. We think that we have captured it elsewhere with the combination of objectives, the way in which the board has to operate in a proportionate manner and the fact that Clause 48 states that policy statements have to be produced. The combination is what makes that effective. The noble Lord may disagree, but that is what I am trying to achieve. I am not seeking to rest purely on Clause 48.
	I will deal with the costs, as they are an important issue. In earlier stages, we talked about the£26.8 million, if I remember my figures correctly, in the PricewaterhouseCoopers analysis. Noble Lords will know, because I have briefed those on the Front Benches, that we have been doing some additional work. We discussed this with the Law Society and the Bar Council to describe how we thought that the figures would need to change in an upward fashion. Our analysis is that something like £38 million or£39 million is required, with a built-in contingency. Noble Lords will also know that the Law Society and Bar Council raised particular concerns about VAT. With the absolute support of my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor, I have undertaken to take those figures away and look again. Before we get to the point of discussing costs on day 3 of Report, my ambition is to be able to come forward with definitive figures for your Lordships to discuss properly. I did not want anyone to be in any doubt about that.

Lord Carlile of Berriew: My Lords, what the Minister has said is welcome. When she comes forward with those figures, will she be in a position to make comparisons between the cost of complaints today and the cost of complaints under the new system? She will be aware that the Bar Council is concerned that what is currently a cheap procedure, and is perceived as giving satisfaction to consumers as well as to the Bar, may be replaced by something far more expensive in which the barrister who is complained about ends up paying some costs even though he is entirely innocent of any wrongdoing, which seems totally unjust to the Bar Council and to those practising. Will she be in a position to make the necessary comparisons so that, if the House decides to divide on these matters, we can compare what we have now with what the Government propose?

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I will commit to do that. I completely accept that from the noble Lord's perspective it would be difficult to make that distinction without those comparisons, so I am more than happy to do what he asks. I am sorry that I cannot give the figures now, but quite reasonable issues have been raised. I saw a story in the Times this morning—it may have been in other press as well—and although the figures were not inaccurate, the assumptions about transitional costs were not right. We want to look at them again because we do not believe that they are completely accurate, not least because some genuine issues have been raised. My noble and learned friend has led this in the past two or three weeks and has made it clear that he wants to be certain of the figures before your Lordships debate these questions, for the obvious reason that noble Lords will divide or not depending on whether they think that this is a reasonable issue. Of course, comparisons are important.
	I just want to say a word about the Legal Complaints Service, because the Bar Council has been commended in your Lordships' House for the work that it has done and the Legal Complaints Service sometimes receives a less good press. The Legal Complaints Service wrote to me to say what it had achieved from April 2006 to May 2007. Fifty-nine per cent of its files were closed within three months with a target of 57 per cent and 94 per cent of its files were closed within 12 months with a target of 94 per cent. The Legal Complaints Service wanted me to say that and I think that we should recognise that success in trying to sort out the underlying issues. The regulatory framework that we are putting in place in the OLC is important, but it is worth putting that on the record.
	Of course we will deal with this effectively. My difficulty with including the partnership conceptin the Bill is that it changes the nature of the relationship too much. We believe that, threaded through the Bill in the different ways that we have expressed the relationship, we have captured what is needed. Noble Lords will make their own minds up on that, but we think that we have achieved what is required. As ever, there is nothing much between us.

Lord Kingsland: My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for her reply, although I am of course disappointed by it. In concluding, I shall go back to the text of the Government's response to the Joint Committee. At the risk of irritating your Lordships unduly, I shall read out the relevant paragraph again. The Government said that they agree,
	"that the intention of the Legal Services Board should be to work in partnership with the authorised regulators, leaving them with the responsibility for day to day regulation. The Legal Services Board should exercise its powers only where approved regulators are clearly failing".
	Two important statements stand out here. First, day-to-day regulation of the professions should be in the hands of the approved regulators. That is principle number one; the Minister helpfully nods. Secondly, the Legal Services Board should exercise its powers only when approved regulators are clearly failing. Will the Minister kindly nod again? She has, and I am most grateful. In her response to my amendment, she said that, although it would be desirable for these two principles to be on the face of the Bill, that would not be possible, as it would overconstrain the regulatory activities of the Legal Services Board. That is my understanding of what the Minister—

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for allowing me to interrupt. The point that I was making—though clearly badly—was that, if you included the words "in partnership", I am fearful that it would mean that everything that the board did would have to be in partnership, which would be a constraint. We agree completely on the fundamental principle of the link between the oversight regulator and the front-line regulators. The Bill says that they must act only when it is necessary to act. But if you say that everything has to be done in partnership, the difficulty is, as I understand it, that you then cannot act in a way that might be regarded as not in partnership. Quite the opposite, it is saying to the front-line regulator, "You have done something wrong and we have to change it".

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I would certainly have a look at it. We think that within the different aspects of the legislation that I have described we have captured it anyway. There is an issue whether I can, first of all, convince the noble Lord that the combination of the way in which the oversight regulator has to operate—that is, to be proportionate and so on, as we have discussed—and the fact that he has to issue policy statements under Clause 48 represents a relationship that is threaded through the legislation in a way that makes it clear what that relationship must be. I understand the concerns very well, but I do not know whether there is a form of words, saying that the Legal Services Board had to act in partnership, that if put in legislation would not in the end constrain the board if it had to do something that was in a sense contrary to the wishes, desires and so on of the front-line regulator—if it had to act in a quite drastic way, although I do not expect it to—and prevent it from doing so.

Lord Kingsland: My Lords, the Minister says with characteristic generosity that since Committee she has thought about it. I am most grateful for her response because, as things stand, apart from statements that she has made from the Dispatch Box, the system of control contained in the Legal Services Bill does not differ in principle from the system on the face of the FSA Act. The philosophy behind it may have been expressed differently by the Government, but if you look at the black letter law, it looks in the Bill as if the LSB is a direct regulator.
	This should be of concern to the noble Baroness not only because it appears not to reflect what the Government want, but because if an amendment of the sort that I suggest is not made to the Bill and the Legal Services Board turns out to act as a direct regulator, the costs of this system will be absolutely astronomical. That would rebound very much against the Government's political interest. It is in the Government's political interest that this legislation is delivered at the minimum cost. It will be delivered at the minimum cost only if the Legal Services Board is a restrained supervisor of other regulators. If the board gets into the business of direct regulation, it is very hard to see where the spending will end. This measure is very much in the interests of the Government, as well as those of us in opposition who believe that the position that the Government seem to have adopted in their response to the joint approach is correct.
	I will consider tabling this statement as a full amendment at Third Reading. I am encouraged by what the noble Baroness said. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Lord Hunt of Wirral: My Lords, this debate may be completely unnecessary. In response to the points that my noble friend and the noble Lord have just made, the noble Baroness clearly stated:
	"We will look at this again".—[Official Report, 9/1/07;col. 179.]
	Therefore, we await the result of her researches.
	I agree with my noble friend and with the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan of Rogart, in particular when in Committee he referred to this clause as an "escape clause". Surely, as my noble friend pointed out in Committee, Clause 3(2)(b), which states,
	"which the board considers most appropriate for the purpose of meeting those objectives",
	clarifies the situation. I reread the comments of the noble Baroness in Committee, but that provision already gives the board the flexibility of ensuring that it acts in a way that is compatible with the regulatory objectives. Where there is some tension or conflict between those objectives, Clause 3(2)(b) gives the board the power to consider the most appropriate way of meeting those objectives.
	As I have said, this debate may be completely unnecessary, because the Minister assured us that she was taking legal advice, which is always a slightly worrying comment. We await with anticipation what, having now taken legal advice, she will say.

Lord Kingsland: My Lords, this amendment deals with proportionality. Your Lordships will recall that this was a central theme in the Committee stage debate and, indeed, it is a constant thread running through the Bill.
	In our submission—I believe that the Government concur with this view—regulation should be both risk-based and proportionate. I have heard the Minister emphasise that on more than one occasion. The question is how to ensure that the drafting of the Bill guarantees that the Legal Services Board acts proportionately.
	As things stand, the Legal Services Board appears to be more or less free to make its own determination of what is or is not proportionate. I accept that proportionality depends on the circumstances of the case but we believe that the Bill would benefit from the inclusion of at least a non-exhaustive list of key factors that the Legal Services Board should take into account when exercising its regulatory function. In other words, our amendment does not define proportionality but it sets out particular factors which the board should have regard to when assessing what is proportionate in the regulation of approved regulators.
	I know that the noble Baroness is well seized of the anxieties of the regulators that are responsible for the world of patent and trade marks. I believe she understands that these small approved regulators fear that, because the LSB is likely to spend a great deal more of its time dealing with the larger approved regulators, it may overlook their limited resources, their low-risk status and their strong track record for good conduct.
	There is a perceived risk—at least by them—that regulation may encourage practitioners to operate, as they can in those two areas, outside the regulated sector. That would have the knock-on effect of driving up costs for remaining members and potentially making the regulators' position untenable.
	I understand that in recent correspondence with the two institutes, the Minister stated that the Government were,
	"entirely in agreement that 'one size does not fit all'",
	and that a proportionate approach should be taken by the Legal Services Board.
	I understand that the Minister also stated in correspondence that,
	"the Legal Services Board will need to recognise the position of smaller regulators ... when exercising functions under the Bill. In doing so, the Board will need to have regard to a number of factors which may include entry and retention of regulated persons to the sector and the effect on fees".
	Yet, there is no obligation in the Bill that the Legal Services Board must have regard to such vital issues as entry and retention of regulated persons, and the effect on fees, not to mention the resources of the regulator. We have been told that the Minister,
	"will look carefully at whether guidance is a more appropriate way to define what is meant by proportionality in the context of legal services".
	We hope that the Minister will accept this amendment as it stands. We would be reassured to some degree by an undertaking that there will be guidance and an indication in general terms of what that might cover. That at least would set out some of those key factors in assessing proportionality. I also suggest that a commitment to guidance on proportionality at this stage might address some of the plainly abundant fears and concerns regarding the levy—a subject, to which as the noble Baroness knows we shall be arriving, at some stage in the next few weeks. I beg to move.

Lord Lyell of Markyate: My Lords, briefly, I support the amendment. It deals with the important question of cost and how it might be possible that ill-advised regulation drove those regulated away from one body and into the arms of another which might do a less good job. It would be comforting if the Minister could satisfy us that other parts of the Bill ensure that the board and regulators do not feel obliged to act in that way. My noble friend Lord Kingsland expressed this as a probing amendment to some extent. It is sensible probe and I look forward to the Minister's answer.

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I am grateful for this further discussion. I have met with the smaller regulators, and we had what I thought was a useful and helpful discussion—not least, perhaps, in exploding a few myths which they held about this legislation.
	The critical aspect of proportionality is inClause 3(3), which says that the board,
	"must have regard to ... the principles under which regulatory activities should be transparent, accountable, proportionate, consistent and targeted only at cases in which action is needed".
	Proportionality is a critical theme of this legislation. It is essential to ensure that proportionality is a key factor in everything that the board does. We have made it perfectly clear to the smaller regulators, trademark attorneys, patent attorneys and so on that this is essential. We would absolutely expect the board to behave appropriately and take into account the size of the body, the nature of its work and so on. That factor is captured within Clause 3(3).
	The difficulty with trying to define proportionality is that you come upon that magic word "list". Noble Lords will know that I have a particular aversion to lists, which I acquired early in my ministerial life. The minute you put a list down, you lose out because you forget to put something in, or you define or constrain issues far too closely for the purposes of legislation. So I do not want to try to define "proportionality". I spoke to legal advisers, parliamentary counsel and so on. It is clear that behaving in a proportionate manner is very well defined. It can be challenged in law. It is very clear what people are expected to do. It is essential for sworn regulators to feel confident about that.
	It is absolutely appropriate that if the Legal Services Board wishes, it can issue guidance. Having read our debates—I am sure that those involved will do so—and having heard from Ministers and officials about the issues of concern, it will be very keen to make sure that it is demonstrating it is behaving in a proportionate way. The Government can issue guidance but they do not in any way prevent the board from ignoring it. I would rather the board looked at this issue in the context of Clause 3 and said: "We have to be proportionate. What does that mean? How does that affect the decision?". Noble Lords will know that although it is a very obvious concept, it is different depending on the decision made, the circumstances and what was happening at the particular time. But it is challengeable, and that is the critical and important part of it.
	Therefore, I resist the amendment because I think that we have the provision within the legislation. The body can indeed issue policy statements on it if it so wishes. I cannot define that for it. It would be wrong to try to do so because I am sure that any definition, however good it is, will fail to address the circumstances that may arise for the Legal Services Board. On that basis, I resist the amendment, but not because I disagree with the spirit behind it.

Lord Kingsland: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her response. I know that she has been in correspondence with the smaller regulators. It struck me from that correspondence that she has given them some encouragement to believe that the Government are sympathetic to what they are asking for.
	I accept that the noble Baroness is reluctant to put in the Bill examples or particular factors to which the board should have regard. At the end of my opening, I suggested an alternative approach. I suggested that the noble Baroness might like to consider guidance as to how the Legal Services Board might approach the question of proportionality. The Government must know what they mean when they insert the word "proportionality" in the Bill. If the Government are saying that they do not know how the concept should be applied, the concept should not be in the Bill at all. If the Government do know how it should be applied, aside from the fact that plainly nobody can anticipate exactly the specific circumstances, they must have an idea how they expect the Legal Services Board to approach the issue. For the Government to say that they know how it should be applied and then to say, "We are not going to tell you. Let us wait and see what the Legal Services Board is going to do"—if that is the Government's position—is deeply irresponsible.

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I am not attempting to be at all irresponsible. We are setting up a professional Legal Services Board. It will be a body of the highest possible calibre, charged with the responsibilities that it must undertake. One of those responsibilities will be that it must behave in a proportionate manner. I would expect an institution of high calibre to be able to work out what that means in individual sets of circumstances. The Government can come up with a list of things. They can offer guidance and whatever if they so wish. The Legal Services Board can ignore that if it so wishes, too. It is an independent body; it has been charged with being proportionate in its activities.
	I met the smaller regulators on 5 February to discuss these issues. The Legal Services Board will have to take into account in all it does that it must behave proportionately, consistently and so on. So I have greater faith in its ability to operate as an organisation in that way. That does not mean that there would be any distinction between the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, and I if we were faced with decisions about how we would regard the concept of "proportionate". I just think that it is a word that has very clear meaning in the way that we approach decisions, and one with which noble Lords will be very familiar in all their activities. The nobleLord himself always operates in a very proportionate way.
	I do not believe that we can gain very much by doing more. I may consider guidance, but I am trying to be realistic and honest. If we are setting up a professional board and giving it clear ways in which it must operate, I am not sure that I would add much to that. That is my difficulty.

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: moved Amendments Nos. 36 to 38:
	Clause 6 , page 3, line 19, leave out "Secretary of State" and insert "Lord Chancellor"
	Clause 6 , page 3, line 21, leave out "Secretary of State" and insert "Lord Chancellor"
	After Clause 6 , insert the following new Clause—
	"Judicial review
	Administrative decisions made in implementation of this Act shall be subject to judicial review under the jurisdiction of the High Court."
	On Question, amendments agreed to.
	Clause 7 [Supplementary powers]:

Lord Campbell of Alloway: moved AmendmentNo. 39:
	Clause 7 , leave out Clause 7

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, although it is essential, as the noble Lord will recognise, that the board can discharge its regulatory duties effectively, it is equally important that there is an opportunity to contest the board's decision where it has acted illegally, improperly or otherwise irrationally. Other than in the case of the board's power to fine, for which separate provision is made in the Bill as noble Lords will know, I believe that judicial review is the correct remedy in these instances. I have consistently made it clear to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, and to your Lordships' House that, as a public body, the decisions of the board and those of the OLC and the approved regulators will be subject to judicial review.
	My concern with the noble Lord's amendment is that by setting out in the Bill that judicial review is available on,
	"Administrative decisions made in implementation ofthis Act",
	we could create uncertainty—I have taken good legal advice on this—as it is unclear where the boundaries lie that separate administrative decisions that are taken in implementing the Act and other administrative decisions taken by the board and the approved regulators, who may run and take the risk of inadvertently narrowing the court's discretion. It is therefore very important that judicial review is available but is not constrained, as unfortunately it would be if the amendment were accepted.
	Clause 7 is an important clause that allows the board to carry out functions that are in effect ancillary to the conduct of its principal regulatory functions. It is about contractual arrangements for staffing, IT, procurement and so on, and if we took it out, we could reduce the board's ability to discharge its duties. It is a standard provision. I could cite a number of Acts in which noble Lords will find it: the Access to Justice Act 1999, the Communications Act 2003, the Energy Act 2004, the Enterprise Act 2002 and the Companies (Audit, Investigations and Community Enterprise) Act 2004. It does not mean that the board can do anything that it feels like; it is about ancillary functions of the kind that I have identified which it may wish to carry out. I hope that the noble Lord will feel reassured that judicial review is available in the way I suggested, and that his amendment would constrain its ability to use it in a way that I am sure he would not wish.